


We Carry On

by nicole_writes



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: AU typical violence, Action/Adventure, Adventure & Romance, Alternate Universe - Zombie Apocalypse, Big Bang Challenge, Character Death, Childhood Friends, F/M, For the Sylvgrid Big Bang, Friends to ?????, Gun Violence, Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-18
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:07:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 61,389
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28554354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nicole_writes/pseuds/nicole_writes
Summary: The Community has always been safe. Right up until it isn't.Now, separated from their friends and family, Sylvain and Ingrid have a meeting point to reach. But, it's never that simple. Between them and Garreg Mach are a hundred miles and hundreds of Infected. They must rely on each other to ward off the ghosts of their past and the zombies that walk the earth around them to remind each other what it really means to be human.
Relationships: Dimitri Alexandre Blaiddyd & Felix Hugo Fraldarius & Ingrid Brandl Galatea & Sylvain Jose Gautier, Ingrid Brandl Galatea/Sylvain Jose Gautier, Sylvain Jose Gautier & Miklan
Comments: 149
Kudos: 69
Collections: Sylvgrid Big Bang





	1. act i. alone

**Author's Note:**

> hello! oh my gosh I'm SO excited to finally get to share this piece with everyone. This is my baby, my monster, my almost defeat. I've been excited since inception about the Sylvgrid Big Bang and I....may have overshot a bit, but it's fine. 
> 
> The lovely art piece you'll see just below this is the collab piece done by Fee! You can find her and all her lovely art [on Twitter here!](https://twitter.com/feliahanakata) Thank you Fee for being so amazing in this collab and dealing with my.....chaos. Your art turned out AMAZING and I'm so thrilled we finally get to share it. Because it's beautiful. I know I'm posting this at an ungodly hour for you, but you've been so amazing to work with through the whole process. The full, non-AO3 squashed version of her gorgeous art will be up on her Twitter [here!](https://twitter.com/feliahanakata/status/1346189658363994113?s=20)!
> 
> Second shoutout goes to Mish ([@paperpenpal](https://twitter.com/paperpenpal)) for being an amazing beta and making this monster actually readable for you guys. Your inbox was my screaming zone through the writing process, we sprinted together, and you edited this into something that actually makes sense. Thank you for saving my ass. 
> 
> I'm on [Twitter~](https://twitter.com/nicolewrites37)
> 
> Lastly! Before I unleash beautiful art and a lot of words, some important  
> TRIGGERS: guns, zombie AU typical violence, mild (and slightly less mild in some sections) gore, as well as a passing description of suicide to avoid Turning.
> 
>   
> 

The Community is quiet and still at night. Ingrid has grown to appreciate the quiet moments in the Community, mostly because they don’t get very many of them. Sitting in the Crow’s Nest on the southeastern wall, she can see almost the entire tent city that makes up Fhirdiad’s largest, and only organized settlement. 

She turns her pistol over in her hand slowly, leisurely, and stares out over the edge of the wall, looking down at the barren streets around the Community. They’re illuminated by the Torch, a large spotlight at the top of the central gate, but otherwise, they are dark and quiet as always. Technically, Ingrid doesn’t need to be up here, since she’s not scheduled, but she had needed a break from the chaos of Career Day. 

There’s a rustling noise behind her and she turns, fumbling with her weapon and dropping it into her lap. At the top of the ladder, glowing in the lantern light, Ingrid spies Dimitri, one of her oldest friends. She sighs and nods to him, stilling her hands. 

“What are you doing here, Dimitri?”

Dimitri climbs the rest of the way up the ladder and quickly moves out of the way, making room for Felix and then Glenn and then, lastly, Sylvain to join her in the Crow’s Nest. Dimitri walks over and squints through the plexiglass barrier she had been staring out into the empty street. 

“Just looking for you,” he answers after the pause. 

Ingrid rolls her eyes and shakes her head affectionately at her friends. “I warranted the entire search party tonight?”

Sylvain laughs and sits on the ground. He leans against the far barrier, tossing his hands behind his head and extending his long legs in front of him. “Nah, we all just needed to get away and I figured you’d be up here so we came to bother you.”

Glenn steps forward and Ingrid softens. He leans in like he’s going to kiss her, but Felix makes a clicking noise with his tongue and Glenn rolls his eyes, redirecting so he kisses her on the temple instead before settling next to her. 

“Why are you up here anyway, Ingrid? No one is scheduled to be here tonight,” Felix says. 

She shrugs. “Wanted to get away from the Career Day festivities.” 

Glenn sighs and tries to take her hand. “You’re still mad.”

Ingrid frowns and draws her hands away, pulling her gun from her lap and sliding it into her holster. “That I got shafted for a Hunter position because I’m a girl? Yes, I’m still mad.”

Dimitri doesn’t look entirely pleased with the mention of Career Day either, and Ingrid knows that he’s less than thrilled to have been chosen to follow in his father’s footsteps as Community Leader. Felix will be joining Sylvain and Glenn, who are both already assigned, in the Hunters which had been exactly what he had wanted. 

“Apply for reassignment,” Sylvain suggests, still lounging and looking entirely too relaxed. “You’re one of the best shots in the whole Community. They can’t reasonably deny you more than once.”

Glenn’s eyebrow twitches and Ingrid looks at her boyfriend. She really doesn’t want to have this argument with him again, much less in front of all of their other friends. He looks away from her and she sighs, pointedly turning towards Dimitri. 

“Are you going to talk to your father?” she asks. 

Dimitri sighs. “No, I suppose I won’t.”

“You’ll be a good leader, Dimitri,” Sylvain assures. 

“If there’s a Community left to lead,” Felix grumbles, crossing his arms. 

“Felix,” Glenn snaps at his brother. 

Ingrid looks back at her boyfriend. “What’s going on?” she presses. She looks at Felix. “Why wouldn’t there be a Community left?”

Glenn huffs and runs a hand through his hair, but then he drops his hand to Ingrid’s and tangles their fingers together. “The last patrol found a weak spot in the southern wall. Apparently the hole is large enough that a Common could have got through.”

Ingrid stares. “We haven’t had a Common inside the walls though. We would know, wouldn’t we?”

Felix scoffs. “Unless someone got bit, killed it, and is in denial about the whole thing.”

“Shut up, Felix!” Sylvain and Glenn chorus. 

A bell rings from the centre of the Community and Dimitri lets out a long sigh. “I guess we can’t hide any longer.”

Sylvain is the first to push himself to his feet and make his way to the ladder that leads out of the Crow’s Nest. He pauses with one foot on a rung and stares at the rest of them. Sylvain sighs and starts climbing down, stopping again when no one makes a move to follow him. 

“Guys, come on. Before curfew, right?”

Then Sylvain disappears down the ladder and Felix grumpily shifts, sliding towards it before making his way down as well. Ingrid tucks a foot under her leg to push herself up, but Glenn tugs on their joined hands, holding her back. She hesitates, turning curious eyes on him, but his expression is unreadable. 

Dimitri seems to pick up on Glenn’s intentions and he quickly scrambles up, heading down the ladder himself with a mumbled goodnight and then Ingrid is alone with Glenn. She frees her hand from his grip and turns her whole body to face him, crossing her legs. 

“Garreg Mach, Ingrid,” Glenn says to her and she almost rolls her eyes in response. “Promise me you’ll make it to Garreg Mach.”

She nods if only to get him to stop bringing it up. “I know the plan. We all do.”

The plan is something that Ingrid has had drilled into her since she was a young child. The Community’s evacuation plans dictate people will evacuate in the case of emergency and stay away from the Community for three to six days before returning to regroup. Ingrid’s family, alongside the Gautier, Fraldarius, and Blaiddyd families, has a second plan in case something goes wrong with the first evacuation.

Glenn sighs. “Look, Felix is joining the Hunters now and Sylvain and I know just how dangerous that can be for people. If anything happens to us or to the Community, you and Dimitri have to get to Garreg Mach. They’re the closest and the most stable Community outside of Fhirdiad.”

“Glenn,” Ingrid interrupts, cupping his face with her hands. She stares into his blue eyes. They’re cold like steel and very different from Felix’s warm amber eyes. “I know the plan,” she reaffirms. 

He softens and leans forward until their foreheads touch. “I know. I just worry about you.”

She bites down the bitterness that swells in her throat and tries to appreciate his thoughtfulness. She should be counting herself lucky to _have_ a boyfriend during the apocalypse, much less one as caring and protective as Glenn. The other girls in the Community have told her as much. Still, Ingrid can’t help but wish that Glenn wasn’t so _Glenn_. 

She pulls away from him. Confusion sparks through Glenn’s blue eyes and Ingrid feels horrible, terribly guilty for a moment, but then she remembers what she and Sylvain had talked about the other night. 

“Glenn,” she says quietly, but the rest of the sentence is swallowed up by the sudden blare of the Community’s alarm. 

Ingrid jerks further away from Glenn, her braid smacking him in the face as she turns rapidly towards the centre of the Community where the central beacon is flashing red. She knows what it means–Ingrid knows all the signals off by heart–but her brain won’t process what’s actually happening. She stares blankly, blindly, and hopes that it will just stop and that it won’t mean what it is supposedly signalling. 

_Red means Infected_.

“Ingrid!” Glenn’s voice cuts through her fog and she turns back to him. “Where’s your bag?”

Her bag. Her bag for emergency escapes. Her bag that is stashed back in the tent that she shares with her brother that’s in the eastern corner of the Community. Her bag that she needs to get so that they can evacuate the Community because _there are Infected inside the Community_. 

“The tent,” she answers. 

Glenn nods and pushes her firmly to the ladder that leads out of the Crow’s Nest. Ingrid, with shaking hands, somehow manages to climb down the ladder without falling and she hesitates at the bottom, waiting for Glenn. He slides down the ladder like a pole on a playground and grabs her arm. 

“The buses, Ingrid. We evacuate and return or we go to Garreg Mach, right?”

She nods, her mind still racing to catch up with all of the information blazing around her. There’s a pop of gunfire nearby and a couple of screams and Ingrid winces. Glenn shoves her shoulders towards the eastern side of the Community. 

“Get your bag, Ing,” he says and then he’s gone, taking off towards the northern end of the Community where Ingrid knows his father is on duty, guarding the Community Leader. 

Ingrid takes a deep breath and then forces herself to run to her tent. People are flailing about the streets of the Community, crying and screaming and running around like headless chickens. Someone slams into her shoulder and almost sends her sprawling into the side of someone else’s tent. Ingrid staggers, grabbing at the arm of another bypasser to steady herself. A woman’s scream pierces the air, the sound rising above the persistent ringing of the siren. Ingrid feels sick to her stomach as she shoves through two people who are about to get into a brawl. 

She tears back the flap of her tent the moment she reaches it and sees that her brother’s bag is already gone, but hers is laid out in the centre of the tent. There’s a note on it in Rowan’s handwriting that just says “Garreg Mach” like everyone has been telling her. Ingrid shoves her arms into her jacket and then hauls her backpack up onto her shoulders, tightening the straps so it rests flat against her back. 

She pulls out of her tent and a middle-aged woman runs into her and trips, almost falling over. Ingrid catches her by the arms and drags her back to her feet, but she doesn’t let go of the woman immediately. 

“What’s happening?” she asks over the blaring siren. 

The central beacon’s red light reflects off the terror-filled eyes of the woman as she shakes her head. “Commons got into the Community. They got the Community Leader. He turned so quickly and–” She breaks off in a trembling voice, shaking her head. “We have to get to the buses.”

Ingrid’s ears start ringing when she hears that Dimitri’s father has been Turned. She rips her arm away from the woman and nearly trips as she stumbles back. “No,” she says faintly and she’s sure the woman can’t hear her over the siren. “I have to find my friends.”

The woman gives her a look that is both pitying and disappointed, but she doesn’t wait, turning and running away. Ingrid watches her for a moment until someone bumps into her as they run by. She’s snapped back to the moment and she knows that she has to find Sylvain or Dimitri or Felix or Glenn. 

She grips the straps of her backpack and feels oddly self-conscious about the gun strapped to her side as, for once, she hopes that she won’t have to draw it. The Community is in chaos around her as everyone flees towards the buses and the Hunters try to corral people. It’s honestly not that hard to slip away from the panicked people because Ingrid knows the Community better than most. She’s grown up here so she knows which smaller paths lead where she wants to go and which will simply lead to dead ends. 

She makes it all the way to the central square without seeing anyone that she knows and panic starts to well up in her chest. She pushes it down and looks around the square frantically, searching for familiar faces. 

Someone grabs her by the arm and spins her around and Ingrid suddenly finds herself face-to-face with Sylvain who looks exactly as freaked out as she feels. She doesn’t hesitate before throwing her arms around him, hugging him tightly. He hugs her back fiercely, but then he pulls her back, gripping her shoulders and assessing her. 

“Are you alright?”

“Yes,” she confirms. “I was looking for you and the others.”

Sylvain shakes his head. “We need to get to the buses. Dimitri and Felix said that they’d meet us at the leftmost bus.” He grabs her hand and tugs on it, leading her towards the northern side of the Community. 

Ingrid lets him lead, but nervousness knots in her stomach. “What’s happening, Sylvain?” she basically yells over the blaring siren. 

Sylvain doesn’t reply, but she does see a muscle in his jaw tick and she bites her lip as they keep moving. When they reach a bottleneck in the crowd through a gate, Ingrid grabs his arm and pulls him to a stop, digging her nails into his arm so that he understands she’s not going to be brushed off easily. 

“We have to find the others,” she says fiercely. 

Sylvain’s gaze is nervous and hurt when it snaps back to hers. “I know,” he replies and she can hardly hear him, relying on reading the movement of his lips more than the sound of his voice. 

Sylvain looks around and Ingrid, not for the first time, wishes that she had some of his extra height to see over the heads of people around them. Sylvain stiffens next to her and then he’s waving at someone with the arm that Ingrid’s not holding. Ingrid doesn’t have to wait long to see who he’s waving to as Glenn shoves his way through the crowd towards them. 

She drops Sylvain’s arm and throws her arms around her boyfriend, hastily kissing him. Glenn pulls back quickly and Ingrid notices that he has his emergency bag with him, but he’s not wearing his good jacket. She frowns, but before she can ask him about it, he starts talking. 

“Dimitri and Felix are at the furthest bus. You have to get to them,” Glenn says. 

He grabs her hand and it’s a strange mirror to how Sylvain had pulled her by the hand, but Ingrid is momentarily caught off guard by how cold Glenn’s hand is. Sylvain might run warm naturally, but Glenn’s hands aren’t usually this cold. 

Ingrid manages to grab Sylvain’s jacket and haul him after her and Glenn as they maneuver, three in a line, through the crowds of panicking civilians. The Hunters of the Community are doing their best to herd people in the right direction, but the Infected siren is still blaring above them which means the situation is far from under control. 

Finally, Ingrid is able to see the buses, but she’s also able to see the shoddily and quickly erected plastic barricade to the north-western part of the Community where people are writhing on the ground and her stomach leaps into her throat. 

“Are they?” she murmurs. 

“Keep moving,” Sylvain mutters, shaking his head, evidently no more interested in looking at the people succumbing to the Infection than she is. 

Glenn drops her hand suddenly and pushes her forward towards the buses, Ingrid stumbles, caught off guard and Sylvain steadies her. They both look at Glenn who is actively shedding his backpack. He has a nicer bag than Ingrid because it’s made of the high-quality material reserved for Hunter’s equipment. Glenn tosses the bag to Sylvain who barely manages to catch it. 

Ingrid steps back towards Glenn. “What are you doing?”

“Sylvain,” Glenn says, not even looking at her. Ingrid sees the cool flint of his eyes lock onto Sylvain’s face. “You keep her safe and you get to my brother and Dimitri,” Glenn says fiercely. 

Panic bubbles up in Ingrid’s chest. “What are you talking about?”

Sylvain adjusts the bags so he’s carrying his bag on one shoulder and Glenn’s on the other. He frowns at Felix’s brother. “When?” he asks. 

“Twenty minutes, give or take,” Glenn replies elusively, keeping his voice flat. 

Ingrid’s mind spins as she puts half the pieces together. Glenn isn’t coming with them. For some reason, he’s giving up his supplies–his emergency lifeline–and he isn’t coming with them. She scans him quickly and almost doesn’t notice the tear in his jeans at his upper thigh. The fabric of his pants is dark, but so is the blood sticking the fabric to his legs. 

“Glenn, you’re hurt,” she says, reaching for him. 

Glenn steps back quickly, stumbling on his injured leg, and Sylvain grabs Ingrid by the wrist, stopping her hand from reaching for him. 

“Get her out of here, Sylvain,” Glenn says. “Promise me! Promise me you’ll get her to Garreg Mach.” His eyes fill with guilt and Ingrid tries to step towards him again, but Sylvain just holds her tighter, keeping her back. 

Ingrid struggles, frowning. “We need to leave, Glenn. What are you doing?”

Sylvain’s arm wraps around her until he is literally holding her back by her abdomen. “Ingrid,” he says, his voice trembling, “we have to go.” Glenn’s eyes are hard as he looks between Ingrid and Sylvain before Sylvain continues, “Glenn, I promise.”

“No,” she says, still staring at Glenn and the wound on his leg. “No, we have to go together. We’re going to Garreg Mach together,” she says furiously. 

Sylvain yanks on her, dragging her back. Ingrid fights him until he tightens his arms around her and lifts her feet off the ground. He turns, trying to drag her back towards the row of buses behind them. 

“Sylvain!” she cries out, struggling. “Let me go! What’s happening?”

She writhes in his grip until she can see over his broad shoulders to where Glenn stands in the middle of the path, staring at the pistol in his hand with a resigned look on his face. Ingrid’s blood runs cold and she goes completely limp in Sylvain’s grasp. 

“No,” she breathes, mind racing. 

Sylvain’s grip tightens around her waist and Ingrid’s world tunnels to Glenn–her first boyfriend, her first love–standing there holding his own gun and looking so resigned that all of her nerves start screaming. Glenn’s hand raises the pistol to his temple. A scream tears from her throat. The siren wails above them. Someone walks between Glenn and where Sylvain is restraining her and she loses track of Glenn. 

A gunshot echoes. 

Ingrid pounds her fist against Sylvain’s shoulder until he stumbles and drops her down onto her feet. She tries to shove around him to run back towards Glenn, but he catches her by the arms, pulling her in so that their foreheads are pressed together. 

“Let me go, Sylvain,” she begs. “He needs help.”

“He’s gone, Ing. He was near Dimitri’s parents when they turned and he said himself that he got bit. He wanted to do this his way and we have to respect that. We have to keep going.”

Ingrid starts to shake. “No, no, we have to help him.”

“Ingrid!” Sylvain snaps, his tone uncharacteristically hard. “We need to go. We need to find Dimitri and Felix and get on a bus and get out of here.”

Behind them, someone screams and Ingrid knows that whatever barrier had been protecting evacuees isn’t going to last much longer. She doesn’t even realize she’s crying until her vision is blurry enough that she can’t see Sylvain’s face clearly even though he’s right in front of her. She furiously wipes at her cheeks and her eyes. 

“Okay,” she replies to Sylvain, her voice hitching on the word. She clears her throat, squaring her shoulders. “Okay.”

Sylvain looks mostly unconvinced by her calmer tone of voice, but he does turn and start pushing her towards the two buses closest to them. Ingrid leans towards the one on the left where they are supposed to meet Dimitri and Felix. Sylvain is bigger than her, so eventually, Ingrid has to let him step in front of her to push people out of the way so that they can keep moving through the crowded space. 

They make it right to the front of the crowd before she finally sees Dimitri and Felix, both of whom are wearing their full emergency gear and are standing outside the bus, scanning the crowd for, Ingrid presumes, her and Sylvain and Glenn. Sylvain waves at them and Dimitri sees them first, pointing them out to Felix. 

Ingrid and Sylvain press forward, trying to reach their friends, but a Hunter puts a palm against Sylvain’s chest and holds them back. 

“This bus is full. You’ll be on that one,” the Hunter instructs roughly, pushing Sylvain back towards the bus to their right. 

“Our friends are there,” Ingrid says desperately. “Please, just let us go with them.”

“Lady, we have an evacuation to run, I don’t have time to worry about where your friends are. Get on the bus or get out of the way.”

The Hunter pushes Sylvain back again and he almost trips into Ingrid, but catches himself. Ingrid watches a dark flash of anger flicker across Sylvain’s face, but before he can do anything reckless, she yanks on the strap of the bag on his right shoulder, tugging him back and towards the other bus. 

“Sylvain!” Felix yells to them. 

Ingrid strains her neck to try and see her friend as she and Sylvain are herded away from their original goal. Dimitri seems to be physically restraining Felix from charging after her and Sylvain. Ingrid tries to hold Dimitri’s gaze, but she loses it when someone cuts in between them.

Sylvain grabs Ingrid’s hand, gripping it tightly and raises his voice. “Garreg Mach, Dimitri, Felix! We’ll meet you there!”

They don’t have time to hear the reply before a dark-haired Hunter grabs Ingrid by her upper arm, gripping hard enough that there’s a pinch of pain, and practically shoves her up the stairs onto the bus. He’s far from polite about it, basically man-handling her with a scowl and a firm push to her back. She almost trips, but she catches herself on the edge of the door. 

“Watch it!” she snaps at the man. He rolls her eyes and waves for her to keep moving. 

Sylvain follows her onto the bus, shooting a scowl back at the dark-haired man and they find themselves quickly herded towards the back. This bus is an old school bus and it seats about 40 people. Ingrid leads the way down the centre aisle, reaching back to grab Sylvain’s hand nervously. He reciprocates her grip tightly and his palm is warm in hers. When a different Hunter barks behind them, at the front of the bus, Sylvain ducks into a row and tugs Ingrid in after him. 

Ingrid collapses onto the seat next to Sylvain, dropping his hand and wrenching her backpack off of her back, shoving it between her shins and the back of the seat in front of her. Her hands are shaking. She settles back into the seat next to Sylvain, who touches the back of one of her hands, in what she’s sure is an attempt at reassurance. The thudding of her heart and the dull, lingering echo of the siren in her ears drowns out his attempts. 

This isn’t like the evacuation drills they run every once and awhile. 

There are no Infected involved in the Community evacuation drills. 

The bus fills up until it’s at capacity and then the engine rumbles on. Sylvain’s hand shifts in hers as his fingers struggle to stretch out to relieve a cramp. Ingrid looks down, realizing belatedly that she has Sylvain’s hand in a death grip. She immediately loosens her grip on his hand and pulls her hand back into her lap, looking away. 

“Ingrid,” Sylvain says. “We’ll be okay.”

Her chest tightens and she has to force herself not to cry. She doesn’t look at him. She can’t see the sympathy on his expression right now or she’ll break down. She can’t afford to break down right now, not with everything that’s happening. She can’t panic either even though that’s the only thing she feels like doing. 

Sylvain takes her hand again and Ingrid finally looks at him, her brow furrowing. She’s unsure why Sylvain isn’t spiralling like she is, but when she meets his gaze, she sees the pain in his eyes that he is trying to push down for her sake. He’s doing that Sylvain thing that he does where he tries to shield her because he’s a little older and a little more experienced. Ordinarily, Ingrid might have found it annoying and condescending, but now, she appreciates his brave face more than she wants to admit. 

Ingrid buries her face in his chest and wraps her arms around him. Sylvain squeezes her back tightly like she’s his last lifeline and, for the purposes of the situation, she might as well be. 

“Sylvain,” she whispers to him, pushing her face into the top of his shoulder. “What are we going to do?”

His chin presses against the top of her head and he takes a shaky breath in that she can _feel_ as his chest tremors. Ingrid curls her fingers into the tough material of his jacket and grips it as she takes a shaky breath. 

“We go to Garreg Mach,” Sylvain says. “The buses are due to return to the Community in six days to check it out and from there, if there’s nothing left, we go to Garreg Mach and we hope that the others are with us.”

Ingrid nods, her forehead scraping against his coat. “Okay.” 

She leans away from him, feeling slightly better and looks past him to take a peek out the grimy window of the bus. The bus moves in earnest now, rumbling off down the half-destroyed streets to get the 30 some passengers as far away from the Community and the Infected crawling within it. 

* * *

Ingrid falls asleep ten minutes into the drive. Her head rests against his shoulder and the tension that has been coiling in her body seems to unwind, just for a little while.

Sylvain feels sick to his stomach. The Hunters on the bus have hardly said a word to anyone in the four hours that they’ve been driving, even when Sylvain points out that he’s actually a member of the Hunters as well. They eye his rank judgmentally and just move on, continuing their patrol of the bus. Technically, these Hunters have seniority over him, but Sylvain’s father’s position in the Community gives him some sway.

He’s grateful that Ingrid stays asleep for most of the drive. It’s probably a selfish relief because it means that he doesn’t have to talk about the fact that her brother isn’t on the bus with them, Dimitri and Felix are on an entirely different bus, and her boyfriend is dead. Her boyfriend had been Infected and her boyfriend had shot himself to protect himself from Turning. 

Sylvain still feels sick thinking about how easy it had been to drag Ingrid away because he had only been concerned with their safety. Glenn had been, according to the Hunter logic that Sylvain has ingrained in his mind, as good as dead. His priorities shifted the moment that he saw Glenn’s wound. He had to protect Ingrid and the others and that meant getting as far away from the Infected as possible, even if it had meant carrying his hysterical friend away from her Infected boyfriend. 

He’s still angry about the fact that they hadn’t been let onto the bus with Felix and Dimitri, but Sylvain had known that he needed to get Ingrid away and that meant getting on the nearest bus and planning on getting back to the Community or to Garreg Mach later. 

He rests his head against Ingrid’s and takes a weary breath. He’s glad she’s sleeping, but he envies her ability to doze off. Even hours after leaving the Community, Sylvain is too wired with adrenaline to sleep. He closes his eyes and tries to sync his breathing with hers, but a whisper from a few rows ahead of him catches his attention. 

“You know who his father is, right?”

The disgusted, half-snarled tone of the voice piques Sylvain’s interest. He forces himself to stay still and he presses his lips together, biting his tongue. He already has a guess as to who they’re talking about but he can’t react because then they’ll stop talking and the sick part of him wants to know if he’s right. 

“All that shit with the Christmas Incident? Asshole. I bet the younger kid is just the same.”

“Miklan didn’t deserve that shit,” the first voice grumbles again. 

Sylvain’s blood runs ice cold and his breathing hitches. He breathes shallowly as he swallows down the panic that buds in his chest at his brother’s name. He keeps his eyes closed and waits, terrified, to see if they have bought his fake-sleep act. Apparently, it is enough to fool the gossiping men, as they continue whispering.

“Maybe we just destroy this kid like the father destroyed his other,” the second man suggests. 

Sylvain’s hand wanders slowly and blindly to his gun which is holstered at his hip as he swallows hard. 

“It’s not like he wouldn’t deserve it. Up on that ivory tower with the Community Leader’s kid where they were protected and cherry-picked for spots as Hunters,” the first one continues, sounding bitter. 

Sylvain takes a risk then, cracking one eye open to look for the gossiping figures. Two rows in front of him, kneeling on seats and whispering to each other are two of the four Hunters assigned to their bus. Those are Hunters, the people assigned to protect the innocent people on this bus talking about _killing_ and _destroying_ him. 

This is not how the evacuation was supposed to go. He is supposed to feel safe. Right now, he feels anything but safe. Sylvain shuts his eyes again quickly and tries to still his rapid breathing into something that looks like sleep. 

He grips Ingrid’s hand in his lap tightly because he needs to stop his hands from trembling causing her to stir against him. She makes a small noise of discomfort at the tightness of his grip so Sylvain quickly releases her hand, hoping that she’ll just go back to sleep, but it appears that he’s not that lucky as she stirs more heavily and lifts her head off his shoulder. 

Sylvain fakes a yawn and looks at her. Ingrid’s eyes are still red as she rubs at them and he wishes he could say something comforting, but all he has is more bad news. She sighs and casts her eyes away from him and Sylvain risks another glance at the conspiring Hunters. 

They have, suspiciously, turned away from him. One of them even stands up and starts walking down the aisle of the bus, checking in on a few of the other civilians. Sylvain feels sick. 

Before he can say anything to Ingrid, the bus lurches and starts slowing to a stop. Sylvain leans forward as the intercom on the bus crackles to life as one of the other Hunters picks up the radio. 

“Pulling over to rest for the night now,” the man says, his voice crackling through the ancient and not-well-maintained speaker system. “We’ll set up camp and establish a perimeter so everyone will be safe. Please make your way safely and orderly off the bus and remember the conduct for evacuations.”

“Remember the conduct,” Sylvain mutters under his breath. 

Ingrid touches his arm, frowning. “Three days out and three days back, right? Conduct.”

Sylvain nods, trying to hide his nervousness. “Yeah.” 

He stands up, bumping his knees against the plexiglass barricade in front of him as he shuffles out of the row, following Ingrid. He lingers in the aisle as she moves forward in front of him and then he follows her off the bus. 

They have stopped at the edge of an abandoned highway by a patch of forest. It’s not the best place to stop since they don’t know what kind of Infected could lurk in the woods, but they’re out of the city so there isn’t much but forest around them now anyway. Sylvain follows Ingrid as they hop the barrier at the side of the road and join the rest of the evacuees at the small wooded clearing. 

Ingrid heads for a large tree at the edge of the perimeter that the Hunters are establishing and drops her bag to the ground. She sits down and pats the dirt next to herself, beckoning to him. 

“We should take stock,” she says quietly, already unzipping the top of her bag. 

Sylvain nods and lowers Glenn’s bag before he sheds his own, placing it next to hers. Sylvain assesses the three bags that they have between the two of them. 

“You should take his pack,” he says to her. 

Ingrid’s lips twitch into a frown, but she’s Ingrid–strong and practical–so she nods, reaching for the zipper on Glenn’s bag. Sylvain watches her systematically empty everything out of the pack, sorting it into piles of necessary and unnecessary and then she does the same with her bag. She rolls her spare clothes up and tucks them around the edges of the bag. She packs her water and rations in the centre part and then continues piling stuff in rhythmically until the pack is full. 

She holds up the two extra bundles of equipment that don’t fit in her bag and Sylvain takes them wordlessly, adding them to his own load. Between the two of them, they have two Hunter-quality survival kits and one Ingrid-level survival kit. It’s almost enough to make him hopeful against what he had overheard on the bus. 

As he does the zipper up on his bag, he drops his voice low. “Ingrid, I can’t stay here.”

She looks almost alarmed. Sylvain grabs her hands, holding them over his bag so it looks like they’re just repacking as they lower their heads together. 

“What does that mean, Sylvain? Why can’t you stay?”

“Those Hunters, the two closest to the bus,” he explains, “I think they used to run with my brother.”

Ingrid tenses. “No. Your father and Lambert ran Miklan and his goons out.”

Sylvain winces at his brother’s name. “I heard them talking about it on the bus.”

Ingrid bites her lip and frowns, but she doesn’t argue with him. “About what?”

“They said that Miklan didn’t deserve what happened at Christmas. Said that they should ruin my father’s other son.”

“Sylvain,” Ingrid says, turning her hands in his so that they’re holding hands properly. “What do you think they’re going to do?”

“I don’t know,” he admits, “but I don’t want to be here to find out. They’re Hunters. They’re supposed to be in charge of protecting these people and I can’t be looking over my shoulder for someone who wants to turn on me every single day if I stay with this group of survivors.”

“Then we leave,” she suggests quietly. “We can walk from here back to the Community.”

Sylvain frowns. “Ing, no. You need to stay with others where you’ll be safe.”

“Sylvain, I’m safe with you.” Her tone of voice is firm and unyielding, just as he knows Ingrid to be in the face of danger. “Where you go, I go.” Her fingers curl more tightly around his wrist until it almost hurts and Sylvain wants to damn her good heart. 

“Ingrid,” he murmurs. 

“Garreg Mach, the Community, wherever,” she emphasizes. “We go together.”

He squeezes her hand back. “Okay.”

“We can leave right before dawn. When they’re not watching, we go into the woods a bit and then hit the road about a half-mile from here,” Ingrid suggests. 

Sylvain nods. “Ok.”

He looks around the clearing. People around them are settling down on coats and small, compact bedrolls that the Hunters are handing out, bedding down for the night. It is still dark, but, ideally, the group will be back on the bus and moving by dawn. It means that it’s time to get what little sleep is possible now. 

Sylvain’s shoulders are tense and his knees are aching and stiff as he starts to feel the exhaustion of the day’s events, especially since he didn’t sleep on the bus like Ingrid did. Nevermind the fact that it’s almost two-thirty in the morning and he hasn’t slept recently. 

Ingrid furrows her brow. “Did you sleep on the bus?”

“No,” he admits, not seeing the point in lying. 

“Sleep, Sylvain, I can keep watch while you do.”

He frowns. “You should sleep too.” 

She shakes her head. “I slept on the bus. I can last a little longer. I want us to be safe. I’ll wake you up when we need to leave.”

Sylvain gives in, he’s too tired for a real argument about this, and shifts, moving to lie on top of his jacket on the dirt ground. Ingrid tugs on his arms, pulling him over so that his head falls in her lap. Sylvain feels horribly guilty for a moment, remembering that Ingrid’s boyfriend had died just hours ago, but her lap is a much better rest than the forest floor. He closes his eyes and falls asleep to Ingrid combing her fingers through his hair and the murmuring of other survivors around them.

* * *

Something pinches his ear and Sylvain grumbles, turning his head sharply to the left to relieve the pain. He hears a whisper and blinks his eyes open, emerging from sleep. His body still feels completely drained, but he sits up slowly, lifting his head out of Ingrid’s lap. 

It’s almost dawn now–the sunlight is just barely starting to creep up along the horizon line–but the rest of the evacuees in their group seem to still be asleep for the most part. Sylvain stretches out his neck and turns back around to face Ingrid. He bites his lip when he sees that she’s lined up the two well-packed Hunters bags and that she’s changed her jacket. 

Her new jacket is a few sizes too big and Sylvain recognizes the stitching, or rather, he recognizes the tear in the stitching that Felix had made with a knife two years back. It’s Glenn’s jacket and it’s too big on Ingrid. Sylvain’s chest tightens when he sees her in it. 

He nods to her and zips up his own coat quietly, stretching out another crick in his neck as he does. Ingrid stands up slowly, scanning the area around them, but none of the Hunters on guard seem to be around in the immediate vicinity. Sylvain slings his bag onto his back and nudges Ingrid backwards into the bushes. 

They walk slowly and quietly, holding hands so that they don’t get separated in the dim light of the forest as they travel blindly. Sylvain leads, pushing into the woods to try and get as far away from the group as they can while also not losing the line of the road they’ll use to get back to Fhirdiad and the Community once they’re free of the Hunters. 

After five minutes, Sylvain almost feels comfortable enough to raise his voice to say something to Ingrid, but a beam from a flashlight washes over him alongside the faint click of a bullet sliding into a chamber. Abruptly, he stops dead, staring at the Hunter who is pointing a gun at him. 

Sylvain straightens up, holding his arms behind him to push Ingrid into a position where she’s mostly shielded by him. The Hunter in front of them is one of the men who had been whispering about Miklan on the bus and Sylvain’s chest heaves with a tense breath. He inclines his chin and swallows heavily. His options are more than a little limited at the moment. 

“I knew you heard us talking,” the Hunter says, stepping a little closer to them. “I was almost hoping you’d run and give me a reason to kill you, Little Gautier.”

Sylvain scowls. “You were one of Miklan’s.”

The man scoffs. “Miklan was the only visionary our damn Community ever had. I was lucky enough to stay when Lambert and your dad threw him out, but now I’ve been presented with the perfect opportunity to redeem myself.”

Sylvain squares his shoulders, trying to block Ingrid from the man’s line of sight. Neither he nor Ingrid can draw their own weapons at this point–not without getting shot. Sylvain would bet on Ingrid being the fastest draw, but he isn’t one-hundred percent confident in his own speed. 

The Hunter leers as he tilts his head, trying to peer around Sylvain to see Ingrid. “And you just thought you’d run off with your little friend here? Thought we’d just let you go?”

Ingrid steps to the side, putting herself in the open. Sylvain grabs her arm, trying to haul her back behind him, but Ingrid stands tall, holding her ground. 

Recognition flits over the Hunter’s face when he gets a good look at Ingrid. “You’re Glenn’s whore,” he says.

Ingrid flinches as anger wells up in Sylvain. “Don’t talk to her,” he snaps. 

The Hunter scoffs and looks Ingrid up and down. “You’re a pretty thing, you know. I bet Fraldarius never treated you right. He was always too dedicated to the needs of the Community over a man’s personal needs.” He gives her a vile grin. “Where’s your Knight in Shining Armour now? Does he know you’re out rolling in the mud with Little Gautier?”

Sylvain steps forward, his temper threatening to burst. “Shut up.”

The Hunter smirks at Sylvain. “Maybe I’ll kill your little boy toy here and show you what a real man is like. Have you ever spread your legs, little whore?”

Sylvain’s anger boils over and it’s only Ingrid’s tight grip on his wrist that prevents him from doing something stupid like trying to tackle the Hunter. Sylvain risks a glance back at her and sees that Ingrid’s gaze is not fixed on the Hunter, but on something behind him: something that has made her eyes blow wide with terror. 

A series of clicks echoes through the forest and Sylvain’s blood turns to ice.

Sylvain only sees the shadow as it lunges. The Hunter doesn’t even have time to turn as the Clicker is upon him so quickly. The Hunter’s scream pierces the air as the Infected sinks its teeth into the man’s neck. Sylvain turns and shoves Ingrid towards the nearest tree. 

They stumble awkwardly behind it and Sylvain holds his breath, wrapping his arms around Ingrid to pin her tightly to his chest. His backpack digs into his back as he pushes his spine against the tree. Ingrid’s hands are curled into the front of his jacket as she breathes quietly and shallowly. 

They stay completely silent and still for a moment as they listen to the horrible flesh-tearing noises that accompany shrieks and wails from the Hunter. The Clicker continues to rumble and groan as it slowly tears apart its prey. Faintly, Sylvain hears the rustle of bushes in the distance which might mean more Infected. Sylvain’s arms tighten around Ingrid and he wonders if the sound of his racing heart is audible. 

The horrible human moans and groans continue for almost a minute and Ingrid winces when, finally, they cease. The faint clicking noise continues. Sylvain can only hope that the tree they have ducked behind is enough to deter the sound-based tracking of Clickers now that the Infected’s previous prey has been taken care of. 

He swallows soundlessly and rests his head back against the bark, his heart hammering. The clicking noise gets a little louder as the Infected lumbers closer and closer to their hiding place, sensing something. Ingrid’s face presses against his chest and Sylvain can feel the terror radiating off of her. 

Clickers are one of the more dangerous strains of Infected. They’re far from smart. A good Hunting squad can confuse their tracking with scattered noises and take them out with a few quick shots. However, if a Clicker gets the drop on you, your best shot is to outrun it. They’re bloated, slow, and blind, but frustratingly persistent.

Sylvain would normally take running into a Clicker over a Sprinter. He would definitely take one over a Slasher, but alone in the woods with no way to ready his weapon without drawing the thing’s attention, Sylvain wishes it were a Common or a Sprinter. Sprinters may be fast, but they only pursue prey that they can catch. Clickers are trickier since they are better trackers and more consistent pursuers. 

The clicking gets a little closer and Sylvain closes his eyes, tilting his head down so that he’s pressing his chin into the top of Ingrid’s head. Then, out of nowhere, there is a high-pitched, feminine scream coming from back the way that they had travelled. Ingrid tenses against him. Her hands curl so tightly into his jacket that he almost fears it tearing. 

The clicking noise stops. A twig snaps nearby and the lumbering footsteps of the Clicker recede as it staggers off in the direction of the scream as more follow it. Gunfire pops in the air and Sylvain takes a shaky breath. He risks a glance around the edge of the tree and sees the trampled path through the forest that the Clicker had taken, leaving him and Ingrid alone. 

He fumbles out his gun and slams the magazine into place, switching the safety off. Ingrid, still leaning against him, does the same with shaking hands. 

“Sylvain,” she whispers, sounding pained, “the survivors back there.”

“We can’t help them,” he says, voice low. “I want to go back for them too, but if we go back we’ll probably be too late.”

Ingrid takes a deep breath and Sylvain watches as her knuckles tighten around her pistol. “I know,” she admits. She gives her head a firm shake, as if cementing her resolve. “Alright, we should go.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain agrees faintly. “We need to get as far away from them as possible and then we need to get as far as we can during the daylight.”

It’s dawn now. Beams of faint gold light peek through the dense forest around them as Ingrid nods to him. Then, they break off into the woods, running away from the sounds of screeching Infected, people screaming, and weapons firing. 

Sylvain alternates between squinting at the ground for any loose roots and looking up to make sure he doesn’t run into any trees as he sprints. Ingrid follows behind him mostly, but she takes the lead occasionally, moving more nimbly than he can under fallen branches and over downed trees. 

Somehow, they are lucky enough not to come across any more Infected as they flee. Whatever creatures had been in the area must have been drawn to the survivor camp by the screaming, leaving them a mostly clean retreat. After what feels like half an hour of running with full packs on their backs, Sylvain doubles over panting. Ingrid stops next to him, and plants one arm against a tree, breathing heavily. 

He holsters his gun and Ingrid does the same while they keep moving and Sylvain looks around. The forest here looks the same as it did by the highway and he’s momentarily afraid that they didn’t actually get very far, but then Ingrid grabs his hand, pointing it towards where the sun is still rising. 

“East,” she says between gulping breaths. “The highway was west.”

Sylvain nods. He unclips his canteen from his backpack and takes a swig before offering it to Ingrid. She drinks for a moment before she reaches over and wordlessly attaches it back to his bag. They nod to each other and start pushing through the plant life around them in the opposite direction of the rising sun. 

It takes them about five minutes to reach the road, but they make it undisturbed beyond the gentle, natural sounds of the forest around them. Sylvain boosts Ingrid over the barrier onto the road and climbs over after her. A sudden dizziness overtakes Sylvain where he stands on the road–the same road they had just driven down with the soon-to-be-no-longer-surviving group of survivors. 

He stumbles back into the barrier and Ingrid lunges towards him, catching his arms and slowing his fall to the ground. She leans between his knees, brows furrowing as she touches the back of her hand to his forehead. 

“You okay?”

Sylvain carefully pushes her hand down. “I’m fine,” he mutters. “Well, fine is subjective.”

Ingrid sighs and sits back on her heels, the corner of her mouth pulling into a frown. “Yeah.”

The rising sun turns her hair into a golden wave around her face and Sylvain closes his eyes, taking a deep breath. 

“What the fuck,” he mumbles. 

Ingrid snorts. “That’s accurate.”

He blinks his eyes open and studies her face. He swallows hard, trying not to think about the fact that it’s been less than 12 hours since the Community evaculated and Glenn had died. Hardly any time has passed since she agreed to abandon the other survivors with him and Sylvain feels guilty for dragging her into his mess. Still, he’s immensely relieved that he hadn’t left her back with the survivors because they’re probably all dead or Turned by now. 

“Ingrid, I’m sorry,” he says. 

The calmness she has been trying to portray cracks and her green eyes well up with tears so quickly that Sylvain can only shoot his arms out and pull her into his chest. Ingrid goes limp against him, pushing her face into his shoulder as she starts to cry. Sylvain holds her and leans back against the barricade, stroking her hair wordlessly. 

He doesn’t even know where to begin with the day that they’re having. Twenty-four hours ago they had been back in the Community for Career Day. Twenty-four hours ago, Ingrid had had her family, her friends, and a doting boyfriend, even if she hadn’t gotten the Career Assignment she had wanted. Sylvain had been in a good Hunting squad, he had been working on his mostly-messed-up relationship with his father, and had had his loyal, longtime friends. 

Now, they’re huddled against the barricade of a highway miles outside of Fhirdiad with no one else around them, running on almost no sleep and with only each other to rely on. 

Sylvain has never felt this alone.


	2. act ii. together

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sylvain and Ingrid return to Fhiridiad.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hi guys! This update was originally scheduled for Wednesday, but with the state of current events in the world and the content of this fic, I chose to push the update to today based on this information. 
> 
> Once again, because I'll never be over this, here is the link to [Fee's](https://twitter.com/feliahanakata) art for this fic -> [here](https://twitter.com/feliahanakata/status/1346189658363994113?s=20)!
> 
> I'm retweeting any and everything I can for the event on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nicolewrites37) if you want to take a look at what amazing things people are creating.

By the time that they manage to get their frazzled thoughts and feelings under control, the sun is getting high in the sky. Ingrid’s feet drag as they start to walk and she’s surprised that Sylvain is holding his head up as high as he is. She had only allowed him a few hours of respite before she had had to rouse him. She can see exhaustion lining the edges of his eyes, but he keeps his chin high and pretends that he’s fine. Her heart twists.

Ingrid is still thinking about the Hunter back in the woods. She can still hear his pained shrieks–shrieks that had accompanied the sound of him literally getting torn apart. She knows that the Infected will kill people. It’s been drilled into her since she was a child, but she’s never been _that close_ before. But, surprisingly, the Hunter’s death is not what really rattles her. 

They had been so sure, back in December, that all of Miklan’s conspirators had been caught and removed from the Community, but that is obviously not true. It is especially unsettling to know that they exist within the ranks of the Hunters and that they had gotten _so close_ to Sylvain. 

Ingrid shields her eyes with her hand and stares up at the sun, trying to orient herself based on the sun’s location, but it’s harder than she expects to recall everything she has learned about precise sun angles. She looks back at Sylvain who appears to be tallying something in his head as he mouths to himself. 

“Sylvain?”

He stops whatever he had been doing and looks at her. “Yeah?”

“Do you know how far from Fhirdiad we are?”

He shakes a hand in a so-so motion. “If I had to guess, I think that the bus averaged about 70 kilometres per hour and for 4 hours, so that puts us at approximately 280 kilometres back to Fhirdiad. Give or take.”

Ingrid frowns. On a good day, she and Sylvain can probably walk for 12 hours a day. From her survival training at the Community, she recalls that it usually takes about 16 hours to walk 100 kilometres. On a rough estimate, it means it could take them as long as five days of walking to get back to the Community. She feels slightly sick. Five days is technically doable, but they’ll need to keep a good pace the whole time and with how exhausted they both are, it makes her nervous. 

“We can probably beat the evacuation returnees back,” she says to Sylvain, keeping her concerns to herself. 

He frowns. “Ingrid, I–” He cuts himself off, frowning. 

She sighs. “I know what you’re going to say.”

“You do?”

“You’re going to say that we shouldn’t keep our hopes up about there being a Community left for us to come back to,” Ingrid finishes. 

Sylvain looks guilty for a moment and she feels bad. “We should probably get moving,” he mumbles. “Gotta get back to the Community and check it out. Then we can figure out what we’re doing about Garreg Mach.”

Ingrid nods. “Come on. I’ll watch your back and you watch mine.”

They set a brisk pace down the road, but Ingrid notices that Sylvain sticks to a stride that keeps him in step with her, even if his legs are longer than hers. It’s relieving to know that he’s just as in sync with her as he used to be. She’s not sure what she would have done if they had lost that along with everything else they’ve already lost. 

The sun is warm as it beats down on them, but it doesn’t chase away the cool fall air so Ingrid digs her hands into the pockets of Glenn’s jacket. Thankfully, the jacket doesn’t smell like him. It smells like pine and wood smoke: scents that Ingrid associates with the Hunters as a whole, not just with her dead boyfriend. 

Thinking about Glenn makes a lump well up in her throat. She presses her lips together and takes a few shallow, bracing breaths so that she doesn’t tear up. Basic survival training has taught her that you can’t pity or turn back for the dead. You have to grieve and keep moving because the world won’t stop moving forward whether you’re ready or not. 

Thankfully, their walk is uneventful. Sylvain doesn’t really try to spark a conversation between them and Ingrid’s grateful. His silent presence is enough because she’s not sure what she would say if she had to say something. Would she bring up Glenn? Dimitri? Felix? _Miklan?_

About three hours into the trek, Ingrid sees a dot at the edge of the highway ahead of them. Her stride stutters and Sylvain glances at her. 

“You okay?”

“What’s that?” she asks, pointing it out.

Sylvain’s gaze follows until he’s looking at the dot on the side of the road. He considers it for a second before his expression brightens. “Come on,” he urges, grabbing her hand. 

He tugs her along down the highway until they’re close enough that Ingrid recognizes the dot as a car. Its paint is chipped and it looks rusted and unused, but that isn’t enough to quell the spark of hope that bursts in her chest. She holds her breath as they approach it, hoping that maybe– _just maybe_ –it might work. 

Sylvain drops her hand to circle around the abandoned vehicle, assessing it. The rear window is shattered, as is one of the backseat windows. But, none of the tires are flat and there are no scratch marks around the gas tank. That means it is possible no one has attempted to siphon it.

A smashing noise catches her attention and she snaps her head up to see that Sylvain has just punted his elbow through the driver’s side window. He shakes out his arm and reaches through the now-broken window to unlock the door. Sylvain, sitting on the edge of the driver’s seat, brushes some glass away to clear the seat as Ingrid rounds the car to stand next to him, leaning on the car door to be more level.

He pries off a panel underneath the steering wheel and exposes a tangle of wires. Ingrid watches his brow furrow in concentration as he thumbs through the wires to find two yellow ones. Their eyes lock when he looks up.

“Knife?”

She slides her pocket knife out of the outside pocket of her bag and hands it to him. He cuts the wire smoothly, stripping back the yellow coating to expose the copper wire underneath. Ingrid takes her knife back and clicks it closed as Sylvain smiles at her. 

“Cross your fingers,” he says brightly. 

He taps the exposed wires together, sparking them with a crack. Ingrid listens as and the engine rumbles to life with a beautiful hum. She lets out a breathy laugh and rocks forward on her toes, leaning against Sylvain and the closed car door between them. 

“It worked!”

“Yes, it did,” he replies, sounding a little surprised himself. “And– _holy shit_ –we have gas!”

“We do?”

Sylvain nods. “Probably not enough to get us all the way back to Fhirdiad, but enough that we should get most of the way back. We might even be able to get to the edge of the city with this much.”

Ingrid squeezes his arm. “We have gas!” she says excitedly. 

Sylvain grins at her. “Come on, get in.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “You know how to drive?”

He shrugs. “Theoretically. Glenn showed me a few years ago, but I’ve never had the opportunity to really try.”

Ingrid sighs. “Well, I don’t, so I guess I have to trust you on this one, don’t I?”

She doesn’t add that she’s jealous that Glenn had taught him and not her, but the feeling pricks in her stomach anyway. Ingrid slides into the passenger seat of the car, settling into the seat as Sylvain fiddles with the gearshift. 

The car lurches a bit and she braces her hand on the dashboard. Sylvain flashes her a sheepish smile. 

“Sorry.”

She laughs. “Just drive.”

* * *

True to Sylvain’s prediction, they don’t make it all the way back to Fhirdiad before the engine sputters pathetically. There’s a clicking noise as the calming rev of the vehicle dies away, the lack of gas catching up to them. Sylvain coaxes the vehicle to the edge of the highway and slows it to a stop. He had offered to stop at some of the other abandoned cars on the side of the road to try and siphon gas, but Ingrid had pointed out that they didn’t have the necessary supplies to siphon effectively. Plus, the stopping and starting might have eaten up more of their precious travel distance. 

It is late afternoon now and Ingrid hesitates half-out of the car, her hand curling and grabbing the roof. Sylvain looks at her curiously. 

“Everything good?”

“Should we just rest here?” she asks. “It’ll be dark soon and we’re both exhausted.”

Sylvain tilts his head, considering. “That’s a good point.” He looks back in the car. “We can put the seats back and it’ll be way more comfortable than anywhere else we might have slept tonight.”

Ingrid nods to him and leans down, finding the lever for the seat and leaning it back as far as it will go until it’s almost horizontal. Sylvain does the same with the driver’s seat, but it doesn’t go down nearly as far. 

“We can trade seats when we’re sleeping,” Ingrid offers. She would feel bad making Sylvain suffer the more uncomfortable seat when there are other options. “We should have someone on watch for as much as we can manage.”

“Okay,” Sylvain agrees. “You sleep first.”

She frowns. “I slept more than you did last night.”

Sylvain resets the driver’s seat and settles into it, pulling out his gun and spinning it slowly around his hand. “I insist, Ing. I’ve slept more recently.”

She huffs. Sylvain is notoriously stubborn and self-sacrificing when he needs to be and she’s too exhausted to fight with him about this right now. She’s been running on adrenaline all day and even though she had tried to nap, sleep had evaded her. As soon as she’s comfortably situated in her seat, she rolls onto her side to look at him. 

“You’ll wake me up if anything happens, right?” 

Sylvain nods but doesn’t look at her. It’s not entirely reassuring. 

“Sylvain,” she urges. “Please, don’t be a martyr.”

He looks at her this time, his eyes softening. They’re golden brown in the early evening light and Ingrid’s stomach flips. She pushes the feeling down and swallows, holding his gaze. 

“I won’t,” he promises and she believes him. 

She frowns but relents, shifting onto her back and letting her eyes close. Her mind is still working too fast for her to sleep but she takes deep breaths, trying to tap into her exhaustion. Ingrid focuses on Sylvain’s steady, rhythmic breathing, using it to ground herself. She’s grateful for him. She knows that she would have spiralled without him. 

Sylvain has always been hard to read, even in his best moments. She doesn’t want him to think about Miklan and all the bad things wrapped up in history with his brother. She doesn’t want him to feel guilty about dragging her away from Glenn back at the Community or for leading her away from the survivors back at the bus.

He has saved her life at least twice in the last 48 hours. She hopes that he knows that. She hopes that he knows that she needs him. 

Her exhaustion finally catches up with her. Ingrid drifts off listening to Sylvain hum faintly to himself.

* * *

Sylvain shakes her awake hours later. It’s pitch dark. Ingrid sits up, rubbing at her eyes with one hand and grabbing at his wrist with the other before he fully retracts his arm to check the time on his watch. It’s a little past midnight; she has slept for almost six hours. 

“Thanks,” she mumbles, still groggy. She moves to get out of the car so that they can trade seats, but he waves her off. 

“It’s fine, Ing. I’m tired enough that I’ll sleep like a baby right here.”

She nods and fiddles with the lever on the side of her seat, resetting it back to a mostly upright position. The Fhirdiad skyline looms before them, dauntingly close and yet still out of reach. The dirty glass of the windshield smears its silhouette into smudges. 

She pulls out her own gun and does a systematic check of it. It’s loaded, the trigger is tense, and the safety is on, to her preference. Sylvain hands her his gun when she’s done and Ingrid rests it in the cupholder between them. 

He grins before leaning back, letting his eyes close. His breathing evens out quickly and she guesses that he’s asleep within minutes. He falls asleep much faster than she had earlier. His precious hours of sleep the night before had been incredibly restless, so it’s a comfort to watch his chest rise and fall with deep, easy breaths. Ingrid hopes that he sleeps better tonight. She’s not optimistic, but at least the car is more comfortable than sleeping on the ground. 

She counts his breaths idly as he sleeps while she looks out the cracked, dirty windshield in silence. Fhirdiad’s skyline haunts her. It is a reminder that they are nearly back to the Community, ahead of the evacuation schedule even, but it forces her to relive the wailing of the siren and the red flashing lights. Ingrid keeps her head up and her eyes alert for danger, but she can’t rid her stomach of an unsettling dread. 

Time drags while Sylvain sleeps, but she doesn’t dare disturb him until the sky starts to glow with the impending arrival of dawn. She holsters her weapon and reaches over, carefully turning Sylvain’s arm to see the time on his watch. It’s just after six.

She sighs before poking him in the arm. Sylvain, a habitually light sleeper, stirs immediately, to rub his face as he comes to consciousness. 

“Hey,” he says, his voice rough with sleep. “Everything good?”

“Yeah,” she confirms. “It’s almost dawn and I just thought we should get moving soon.”

Sylvain sits up, rolling one shoulder and nods. He reaches for his bag which he had tucked between his knees to pull out a ration package. Her stomach growls as he tears it open before he pulls out a few strips of jerky. Sylvain chuckles lightly, tipping it towards her. She thanks him quietly and takes the rest of the package. 

They split the food relatively evenly. Sylvain is physically larger than her, but Ingrid has always been a fairly big eater. Once they’ve finished with the package, they leave it in the car and climb out. Ingrid stretches out a kink in her calf and zips up her jacket, blocking out the chilly air. 

The silence between them as they adjust and prepare seems to widen their physical separation. They’re separated by only the width of the car, but Ingrid’s chest tightens and she quickly rounds the outside of the car to stand next to him. Without the rumble of the car’s engine, the silence feeds the emptiness of their situation. It’s a curling, all-encompassing emptiness that’s horribly lonely. 

It’s fall now, and Ingrid dreads winter’s arrival. She hopes that they’ll either be safely back in the Fhirdiad Community or in Garreg Mach by the time that winter hits full-force. 

“Come on. We’re getting close,” Sylvain beckons. Ingrid follows the direction that he gestures with her gaze, contrasting the clearer, less-obstructed silhouette of the former capital city’s mostly-destroyed skyline with the haunting shadow she had watched through the windshield. 

Fifty years ago, Fhirdiad had been the pinnacle of Old Faerghus: a relic from the old ages, but after years of abuse and decay, it hasn’t held up well. Still, the Fhirdiad Community has been Ingrid’s home for her entire life and she’s eager to return and see what is left of it and if anyone else has ventured back. 

The looming nature of the city makes the walk deceptively long, something Sylvain isn’t afraid to voice his complaints about. Ingrid just rolls her eyes, smiling faintly to herself whenever he does. At least Sylvain hasn’t changed one bit. Ingrid knows most of his complaining is purely light-hearted posturing to try and lighten the mood. It’s very typical of Sylvain. 

It takes three hours to finally hit the turning point where they turn off the highway that would lead them straight to the downtown core of the city. Ingrid finds herself leading as they exit off the main highway to push through residential streets back towards the only home she has ever known. 

“Do you know why they built the Community out here and not downtown?” Sylvain asks. It takes her a moment to remember that Sylvain had been born in the Community too. 

“Space,” Ingrid answers reflexively. “They wanted space to erect walls and that sort of thing and when you have a downtown core,” she gestures to the taller buildings of the main city, “there isn’t really space for that to happen. In the suburbs, they could build the walls and such with fewer worries.”

“Fewer people too,” Sylvain adds, hastening his pace a bit to fall into step with her. 

Ingrid tilts her head, frowning. 

“They never tell you that part, but it was because of people too. More people meant more Infected,” he explains.

Unfortunately, Sylvain is right. According to the history that they were taught, major cities had been the first places to fall to the Infection. Apparently, it had taken years for some of the more isolated, rural areas to finally discover what had happened. But, now, fifty years past the first reported cases, there isn’t an area on the continent that is untouched. The Infected are good wanderers. 

She hears the growl of a Common before she sees it and she freezes, grabbing Sylvain by the arm and hauling him behind the shell of a broken-down and stripped car. She draws her gun and watches as Sylvain does the same out of the corner of her eye. His expression turns grave as he picks up on what she had heard. 

They risk a glance above the car’s shell and see a group of three Commons lumbering along the street, wearing nothing but tattered grey and brown rags. Ingrid lifts her gun, but Sylvain presses a hand on her sights, pushing it down with a shake of his head. 

“We don’t need to kill them,” he whispers. “The gunshots will only draw more. Let’s just go around them.”  
Ingrid nods, deferring to his experience. Sylvain, as a Hunter, has spent more time outside the walls of the Community than she has. He also has practical experience killing Infected. As good of a shot as she may be in training, Ingrid has never actually shot a living thing. Well, it’s probably not correct to call the Infected _alive_ , but the comparison stands.

They stay crouched low behind their cover for a few minutes as the Commons trudge off down the street, groaning and lurching as they do. Ingrid stands up carefully, and when she doesn’t attract any attention, she nods to Sylvain so they can slip away down the street. They try to draw as little attention as possible while moving, Ingrid watching their back while Sylvain leads forward to the Community. 

They continue down Elm street towards the Community, passing a gutted corner store where Glenn had once brought Ingrid for a bit of privacy. She tears her eyes away from the boarded-up storefront when she feels a sharp twinge of both pain and guilt. It had just been an evening away from the bustle of the Community, but it reminds her all too strongly of Glenn. The night is one of her fonder memories and any patrols past the store had always made her smile. 

When they round a familiar corner at Elm and Seventh, Ingrid bumps into Sylvain as he stops in his tracks. She catches her balance after a split-second and then she follows his gaze. 

“Oh _no_.”

It’s a common belief amongst children in the Community that the walls are impenetrable and will always keep them safe. That belief fades with time, but, standing before the wood and metal and plastic northern wall, Ingrid’s faith in the Community’s tenacity is completely shredded. Even from two blocks away they can see the ripped down metal siding and how the wood and plastic are peppered with bullet holes.

“Ingrid,” Sylvain murmurs, but he doesn’t stop her when she steps around him, raising her weapon, to approach the tattered wall. 

The outskirts of the Community are silent. The eerie quiet, broken by nothing but a few faint gusts of wind over stone and metal make it feel like a graveyard: haunting and empty and desolate. As she closes the distance, Ingrid can see how damaged and irreparable the walls of the Community have become. Beyond the physical destruction of the outside, Ingrid can see shredded tents and destroyed structures that have been a part of the Community since she was a baby. 

She swallows harshly as her foot crunches over glass from an unknown origin. There’s a low hissing noise to her right that makes her jump and scramble for her gun. From the left, a gnarled hand swipes at her ankle. She kicks it away, stifling a startled yelp and staggering to the side. Ingrid doesn’t even get the chance to turn fully towards it before a pistol fires and the hand stops moving. 

She looks over her shoulder to see Sylvain lower his gun. The Infected is pinned under part of the crumpled north tower. The front of its face was blown off by the bullet, scarring pale, almost-grey skin and scattering black, oil-like blood along the ground beneath it. One hand is still extended towards Ingrid, reaching in her direction, but it’s definitely dead. 

“Thanks,” she says to Sylvain. 

“I got your back,” he reaffirms. 

Ingrid presses forward, keeping her gun raised and her ears peeled for any more noises. Her heart thrums in her ears, adrenaline driving her forward. She keeps a much tighter grip on her weapon, refusing to get caught off-guard again. She steps over more of the destroyed wall into the now-deserted Community. 

“It’s only been two days,” Ingrid murmurs. “How did it get this bad, this quickly?”

Sylvain frowns. He nudges a piece of debris with his foot. “Not all of this looks like damage from Infected,” he observes. “Maybe raiders came in after the buses left. Wouldn’t be the first time that they’ve tried to come through.”

It’s as good a theory as any, Ingrid reasons. 

The first body they find is half-buried under a roll of torn canvas. One of the woman's eyes is completely gone, leaving a sunken, black socket coated in dried blood. Her remaining eye is wide and glassy and half of her face is just shredded flesh: her nose is half-torn away and there are smears of black Infected blood mingling with the woman’s own around the claw marks over her mouth. The exposed flesh is still pink but tinged with grey and black. Something has ripped her throat out, marked by nail-like scratches around the jugular, and Ingrid doesn’t bother pulling the canvas back any further to see the rest. 

Her stomach spins as she stumbles back, dropping the fabric over the woman’s face. She turns away, doubling over as she retches, trying not to actually be sick. Through a haze, she feels Sylvain’s hands rubbing her back, pulling her braid out of her face, as he murmurs and tries to be comforting. The urge to vomit passes after a minute and Ingrid straightens up. She averts her gaze from the folded canvas, biting the inside of her cheek as Sylvain frowns at her. 

“Did you recognize her?” Sylvain asks. 

“No,” Ingrid says. “I didn’t. I just–” she hesitates, but Sylvain waits for her to continue so she finishes, “I wonder who we might find that we do.”

Sylvain’s expression twists at her words and she hurriedly looks away. 

“Nevermind. Let’s just keep looking. Maybe we can find more supplies.”

Sylvain follows her for another minute in silence before he speaks up. “If you wanted to look for him, we could. Maybe we can find his body and give him a real burial.”

Ingrid stops in her tracks. Her heart jumps into her throat. It’s heavy and it burns as she swallows, turning to Sylvain. “What?”

“He was my friend too,” Sylvain adds quietly. 

Ingrid takes a deep breath and surveys the devastated Community. Some of the tents are still standing, but it’s clear that this place has been torn through by Infected, panicked survivors, raiders, or some combination of the three. There are probably dozens of Commons or Infected here, trapped like the one at the north tower had been. Looking for someone would be difficult without the threat of surprise attacks, but with it? It is asking for one of them to die. 

“Let’s keep looking for supplies,” she says evasively. 

Sylvain looks a little disappointed, but he doesn’t press the issue. “Town Hall was around here, right? Or Mess?”

She hums in agreement. “Northern side, yeah. Maybe there are perishables in Mess.”

* * *

The Mess tent is the largest tent in the whole Community. It has rows of tables, a cooking area, and food storage, but by the time that Sylvain and Ingrid step into it, it is barely standing and there’s a large hole torn on the southern side. Half of the tables are overturned and there’s a scorch mark on the fabric near the kitchen as if something had been set on fire. It matches the destruction of the northern wall. 

Sylvain manages to scrounge up a few clips of bullets from Hunters around Mess. There are a handful of bodies near the entrance, probably the first line of defense of the Community’s precious food resource, and a few others scattered behind upturned tables. Looking at the injuries sustained by the now-corpses, Sylvain feels more confident in his previous assumption about raiders since he has never known an Infected that used a gun. 

Sylvain recognizes one of the dead men near the entrance. He had been one of the senior Hunters who trained Sylvain in field skills when he had first received his assignment. His name was Peter. His Hunting rank is displayed proudly on his jackets, but, of course, it had done little to protect them from gunfire. Sylvain kneels next to Peter’s body and carefully digs through the man’s jacket pockets. He finds a full magazine and a worn, blood-stained polaroid picture. 

Sylvain rests one hand against his mouth as he studies the picture, frowning. It’s obviously Peter in the photo, but the man has a little girl in his arms who can’t be more than three years old. Sylvain carefully places the photo back. 

“I hope your daughter is okay,” he mumbles, pocketing the stolen magazine. 

Sylvain turns his back on Peter and spots Ingrid combing through wreckage on the other side of the tent. Her shoulders are tense, knotted up in panic and fear. Ingrid doesn’t have the same experiences with death that he does. She hasn’t seen a man taken down by an Infected. He’s not sure that she’s ever seen a dead body up close before today. 

Survival is like walking on a very thin wire. He has to be strong so that he doesn’t accidentally send her toppling off of it. 

His hands are shaking. They’ve been shaking since he killed the Infected back at the north tower. It’s that horrible mix of adrenaline and anxiety, the one that crops up in life or death situations–always associated with Hunting missions outside of the walls of the Community. The Community was a place of respite, long-heralded as safe. It’s disorienting to see it utterly destroyed and downtrodden after only two days post-evacuation.

“Hey! Sylvain!” Ingrid calls. 

His head snaps up and he picks his way across the room to her, stepping over bodies and debris. She’s staring down at an ice chest that is, surprisingly, filled with a few pieces of fruit and vegetables that had been grown in the Community’s greenhouse. Sylvain blinks at the fresh food dumbly for a moment before he grins at Ingrid. 

“Nice find, Ing.”

She smiles back and they wordlessly sling off their packs, taking as much of the fresh food as they can carry. Sylvain withholds the last apple and wordlessly cuts it in half with a smooth slice of his knife, offering half to Ingrid. It’s certainly not the best apple he’s ever had, but he doesn’t have room to complain. 

Ingrid wrinkles her nose but doesn’t complain. She dusts off her hands on her pants instead and motions to the exit. “There’s nothing else here worth taking, right?”

Sylvain shrugs. “You’re probably right. We should get moving.”

They leave Mess through the torn hole and find themselves in a half-circle of partially demolished wooden huts and collapsed tents: the old common areas of the Community. Sylvain shields his eyes against the contrasting brightness outside and looks around them. Besides the faint whistle of wind and the crunch of his and Ingrid’s shoes over broken glass and other debris, it is silent. A tent flaps in the breeze, but otherwise, there is an unsettling stillness over a usually busy area. He looks up at the sky, noting the few grey clouds that seem to be rolling in, blocking most of the sun’s light. 

Ingrid trails towards the building next to Mess and Sylvain follows her, frowning. He’s not sure what she's after in Town Hall, but he’ll follow her if she wants to explore it. Town Hall had been one of the few permanent structures built from wood and metal siding in the Community. Sylvain’s surprised that the door is still attached to the entrance. He would have thought, of all the places to be kicked in or destroyed, that it would be Town Hall: the beacon of the Community’s organization.

“Cover me,” Sylvain requests, stepping up to the door. 

Ingrid nods and holds her gun at the ready. Sylvain kicks hard at the wooden door and it splinters inward, coming mostly off the hinges. The inside of Town Hall is dimly-lit, illuminated by a few beams of light coming in through a hole in the roof, but the light is muted and dimmed due to the gathering clouds. 

Sylvain holds his gun chest-high and steps in. It smells vile–like rancid, newly-rotting flesh–and he takes shallow breaths through his mouth to minimize the stench. At the far end of the room, Sylvain sees three shadowed lumps just barely lit by rays of sunlight: bodies. Very few people would have reason to die in Town Hall. It gives him a guess at who two of them might be, but he’s unsure about the third. 

He wonders if it’s his father. At this point, he’s not sure if he wants it to be his father. 

Sure enough, when he gets close, he sees the familiar Blaiddyd blond hair on one of the bodies. It’s Dimitri’s father, Lambert, who had been the Community Leader for as long as Sylvain had known him. The woman next to Lambert is Patricia, Dimitri’s step-mother. The third body belongs to a Hunter that Sylvain recognizes as Rufus, Lambert’s brother. All three of them have bullet wounds in their heads and the familiar grey pallor to their skin that even newly-Turned Infected have. 

Sylvain studies them only for a moment, filing the information away. It’s not unexpected, but that doesn’t make it less distressing. It also reminds him of Glenn: of his loyalty and determination. Dimitri’s parents had always been nice people, his father especially. Sometimes, Sylvain had felt more relaxed around Dimitri’s father than his own. He bites his tongue, frowning before stepping away from the bodies. As he moves back, Sylvain catches Ingrid staring at Dimitri’s father, a twisted frown on her face. He steps closer to her, reaching out. 

“They’re dead, Ing. Let’s get out of here,” Sylvain urges, gently touching her arm and turning her back towards the entrance of Town Hall. 

Ingrid lets him lead without much resistance as he guides her back outside. The sky above them is rapidly turning a darker grey and the sun is almost entirely blotted out now. It is starting to look more and more like it might rain and he would rather be somewhere sheltered, with solid walls and a defensible position, when it starts.

“Anything else you want to grab while we’re here?” he asks. He winces, realizing too late that his words had come out as almost dismissive in regards to the massive tragedy that they’re actively wading through. 

Ingrid takes a shaky breath. “A part of me had been hoping that it would all still be here, standing and undamaged, when we got back. That everything could just go back to normal.”

Sylvain frowns. “Seeing Lambert made it real, huh?”

Ingrid shrugs weakly. “Made it hurt,” she admits. Something else flickers in her expression and Sylvain studies her, trying to read it. 

“Ingrid?”

“Glenn died for them, didn’t he?” she asks. “He was loyal to them to the end. He came here when the sirens started going off.” Ingrid takes a shaky breath. “You tried to tell me that when we were evacuating, didn’t you?”

Sylvain drops his gaze to the ground, studying his scuffed and muddy boots. He had told her that Glenn had been bitten. Sylvain, knowing Glenn as he does, had assumed it had happened near or with Dimitri’s parents. He shared a lot of assignments with Glenn as Hunters, but their most recent one had been separate. He had been on wall guard duty while Glenn was assigned to guard the Community Leader. 

Sylvain, when the assignments came out, was envious. Glenn’s job was more interesting but Glenn had simply patted his shoulder and reminded Sylvain that interesting isn’t always better because interesting is often more dangerous. And, considering that both of Dimitri’s parents had been bitten, Sylvain knows that Glenn was right. After all, Sylvain is here with Ingrid and Glenn is dead. 

“Yeah,” Sylvain admits quietly. “Did you want to go look for him?” he asks again. He looks towards the area where the buses had left from. It isn’t that far from where they’re currently standing. 

“No,” Ingrid replies. She looks up at the sky, eyeing the grey clouds. “We should find a safe shelter before it starts to rain.” He wonders how much of it is actually her desire not to be caught in the rain and how much of it is emotional avoidance. Sylvain would love to give his friend a proper burial, but he doesn’t particularly want to find the inside of Glenn’s head scattered against the stones of the main square. 

“There’s a Hunter safehouse on Fourth if you can walk another few blocks,” Sylvain suggests. 

Ingrid nods, squaring her shoulders and putting on the familiar brave expression that he’s seen her wear for two days now. She looks tired. He feels awful. “Lead the way.”

Sylvain leads the way out of the Community back onto Fifth. He starts walking away but turns after a few paces to take a last look at the place that they had grown up. The Community is broken beyond repair. It isn’t the safe shelter it has been for his whole life. It’s empty and abandoned and there should be nothing left for them here, but a heavy wave of nostalgia gives him pause. 

He grew up here. He learned the secrets of every nook and cranny of the Community. He kissed more than his share of young women in darkened corners. He stayed up too late with Ingrid and Felix and Dimitri talking about nothing and everything. He was assigned as a Hunter here. He learned to fire a gun here. Most of the memories are good. They’re good enough that it feels like leaving a piece of him behind. 

But, they have to keep moving because they have to be safe. Sylvain steps further away, heaving a slow, uncertain breath. At least he isn’t alone. Ingrid walks beside him. She mostly keeps her eyes cast downward as they leave the Community, but her hand hovers over her weapon just in case. 

“I was going to break up with him,” she says suddenly. 

Sylvain stumbles, surprised. “Glenn?”

She laughs bitterly. “Stupid, right? He was one of the best boyfriends that a girl could have asked for during the _fucking_ apocalypse, but I was going to dump him anyways.”

“Is this about,” he trails off, uncertain how to broach the subjects that he and Ingrid had talked about a week before everything had gone down. She had come to him, frustrated about Glenn and, like a good friend, Sylvain had talked her through her annoyance and disappointment.

“Yes and no?” she replies. “Yes in the sense that Glenn didn’t listen to me. He just kept talking about me like I was fragile. He never seemed to understand that I was a better shot than half of the Hunters at the range and that I _wanted_ to be a Hunter. He wanted to treat me like I was made of glass.” 

Sylvain knows this argument. He had heard it from both Ingrid and Glenn, but privately he had agreed with Ingrid over Glenn. Ingrid is tough and stubborn and has survival instincts that most Hunters lack. Sylvain knows that Glenn had a tendency to come off a bit suffocating to Ingrid, but he had loved her in his own way–his own stilted, protective, Fraldarius way.

It’s a strange idea to consider that this argument, apparently, had nearly driven Ingrid to want to break up with Glenn. Of course, Glenn is dead now so none of it really matters, the grim part of himself reminds. 

“You know, that’s okay, right?” Sylvain says. “It’s your life, Ingrid. You don’t have to live by anyone else’s rules or expectations. You can date as many or as few people as you’d like and you can date who you’d like.”

Ingrid scoffs. “Date as many people as you’d like?” she says, aiming a jab at him. 

Sylvain scratches the back of his head. He had had a bit of a reputation in the Community amongst young women for being a flirt and a womanizer. Ingrid had ragged on him for it a lot, but he hadn’t ever really changed. He had never been serious about anyone he had dated or flirted with though. Never serious like Glenn and Ingrid. 

“Hey, I was never really dating any of them,” Sylvain defends. “I’ve never really done serious relationships. You know that.”

She sighs. “Yeah, yeah. That’s why this feels weird.” She gestures between them.

Sylvain frowns. “This?” They’ve had similar conversations before, but Sylvain assumes the gravity of the situation sets this one apart. 

She doesn’t look at him, continuing to walk towards Fourth. “You said it yourself. You never did serious.”

Sylvain jogs after her, catching up. “Doesn’t mean I can’t listen,” he argues. He has always listened to her when she needed him. “When have I not taken you seriously?”

Something softer curls into her expression and she seems to lighten a bit. “Never,” she confesses. “You’ve been a good friend to me, Sylvain.”

He offers her a smile. “So tell me about it. Talk to me, Ingrid. About Glenn, about whatever is on your mind.” He makes a show of looking around at the empty streets around them. “It’s not like there’s anyone else for either of us to talk to.”

She chuckles. “No, I guess you have a point.”

He winks and she rolls her eyes like it’s a reflex before sobering. 

“Is it stupid of me to be relieved that I never had to do it?” Ingrid asks. “I never had to actually have the conversation because he just,” she trails off, unable to finish. 

“I don’t think it’s stupid. Maybe it makes you a bit of a coward.”

Ingrid’s head whips towards him, offended. “Coward?”

He holds his hands up. “Hey, it’s not necessarily a bad thing. Flaws make us human, right? You can’t be good at everything, Ingrid. You’re a crack shot and you’re wicked smart. You can’t be perfectly emotionally competent and stable too.”

Her anger withers and she laughs a bit. “A coward, huh?”

“Let’s go with flawed human,” he corrects. “Coward was a bit much.”

“It doesn’t make me a bad person?” she asks. 

Sylvain shakes his head. “Of course it doesn’t. You’re probably the best person I know, Ingrid.”

“It still doesn’t really feel real, you know,” she continues, brushing aside his compliment. “Glenn is dead, the Community is gone and I have no idea where my family is.”

Sylvain doesn’t know what to say to that. She’s right in the sense that it does feel like a horrible bad dream that they’re just waiting to wake up from, but Sylvain is slowly starting to understand that it isn’t a dream. In a dream, he would have been woken up by Felix at the crack of dawn and the Community would be intact. He would have spared his father a passing greeting in the morning and then gone about his patrols during the day. He probably would have shared dinner with Ingrid and Glenn and Dimitri and Felix before they all retired to bed. 

Instead, Glenn is dead, Dimitri and Felix are god-knows-where, and he has hardly spared his father a second thought since everything began. 

Thankfully, he’s saved from having to respond to her by their arrival at a boarded-up storefront on Fourth: the Hunter safehouse. 

Sylvain snags the lock, turning its face to him, and spins the combination before popping the lock off. He is about to open the door when he hears a faint hissing noise behind it. Instinctively, he fumbles for his gun, but his hand, already turning the doorknob, slips as the door bashes open, knocking him back and off-balance. There isn’t enough time to bring his gun up before the snarling Common lunges forward, slamming into Sylvain’s chest. 

Sylvain goes down hard with the Infected on top of him. He barely catches his head from cracking against the pavement and his elbow slams on the ground with a sickening crunch–not enough to break, but enough for a nasty bruise. His gun skitters away and Sylvain reflexively grabs the top of the Common’s head to keep its mouth off of him as they tussle. He grunts as it snaps at his fingers with blackened teeth, snarling and hissing. 

He reaches back, groping blindly for the knife on the side of his backpack with one hand while the other hand focuses on keeping the Common’s teeth away from him. His hand curls around the hilt of his blade just as a pistol shot fires. The side and back of the Infected’s head spatters on the sidewalk next to him and over his left side. 

Ignoring the revulsion that stirs his stomach, Sylvain kicks the Infected off and jabs his knife into its sternum, slicing up in a hard line to make sure that the thing stays dead. He pants and leans back once it gives a final, awful gurgle. He sits back on his ass and looks up at Ingrid who is still pointing her weapon at where she had shot the Common, green eyes wide. 

Slowly, she lowers her weapon and looks at him. “Did it get you?” she asks frantically. 

Sylvain does a quick check: face, neck, arms, torso, legs. He’s fine. “No,” he assures. He looks at the grey and black brain matter spattered on the sidewalk. “Nice shot.”

Ingrid presses her lips together, holsters her weapon and offering him a hand up. Sylvain tucks his blade away and brushes off his hands. He shakes off a bit of the disgusting grey matter clinging to his left sleeve and looks down at the body. He curses when he realizes that the Common is wearing a ripped version of the same jacket that he and Ingrid are both wearing.

“Former Hunter,” he comments. “Look at the jacket.”

“Shit,” Ingrid mutters, looking at the door to the now-open safehouse. “Do you think there are more?”

“I hope not,” Sylvain says, raising his gun as he steps towards the entrance. 

Upon a quick sweep of the safehouse–checking around the corners, by the bookshelf, near the bed, and in the small makeshift kitchen–it appears to be clear of any other Infected. Ingrid is the one who discovers the note next to the table that is signed by a Hunter that Sylvain doesn’t recognize. The man had, apparently, locked himself in the safehouse after he missed the evacuation, only to realize later that he had been bitten. 

Sylvain dumps his bag on one of the chairs in the room and checks the supply of the safehouse. It’s not a large one, or a well-stocked one, but it’s a single room with a double bed, a table with two chairs, and, most importantly, more ammunition. The outside chain-link door locks and the wooden one inside bolts. It's fortified enough that Sylvain trusts it to hold back any curious Infected for a couple of nights. 

Sylvain drops his bag onto the table and digs out some of the things on top, including a folded map, and a half-dozen clusters of magazines. As he adjusts, he notices that Ingrid is sitting on the edge of the bed, staring at her gun. He pauses and looks towards her. 

“You okay?”

“I’d never killed one before,” she admits suddenly. 

Sylvain blinks. He hadn’t even considered that Ingrid, as good of a shot as she is in practice, has never killed an Infected, nevermind one that was attacking an ally.

“Oh,” he replies, feeling dumb. 

Ingrid presses her lips together. “It wasn’t like I thought it would be,” she confesses. “I had expected it to be more human when it died. More blood or something.” 

She slides the magazine out of her gun and pushes it into a pocket on her backpack before tucking the rest of the gun away too. Sylvain stops unpacking his own bag, placing his gun on the table. He walks over and sits on the bed. 

“Most of them are like that. Commons are arguably the most human. They still bleed red sometimes, but the rest of them are all black,” he explains.

Ingrid doesn’t look at him. His mouth keeps running. 

“They still sound like people when they die sometimes though.” 

Ingrid fumbles with her bag and it tips over. She looks at him this time, her lips parted in surprise. 

“What?”

Sylvain swallows. “You said that you’d never killed one, so I guess you wouldn’t know that. The Commons sometimes don’t mutate fully and keep their vocal cords and stuff. They can still scream.”

Ingrid looks mildly horrified. He feels guilty bringing it up, especially on the back of seeing their destroyed home and her killing her first Infected. 

“Sorry,” he mutters. 

She shakes her head. “No, it’s fine.” It’s obviously not, but there are no take-backs now. She twists her hands in her lap. “Does it get easier? Killing them?”

Sylvain shrugs. “I dunno. I guess it does if you stop thinking of them as people. Survival instinct has to be stronger than anything else, you know.”

“Yeah,” she says quietly, “I guess I’m learning that.”

“You did much better than my first time, I’ll tell you that,” he continues. “I think I cried for like thirty minutes after.”

“Really?” She sounds surprised. 

Sylvain runs a hand through his hair. “You know me, not exactly the cool-under-pressure kind of guy.”

She gives him a short laugh and then leans her head against his shoulder. He keeps his eyes on her as she surveys the safehouse. “What do we do now, Sylvain?”

“We go to Garreg Mach,” he replies reflexively. 

“We should wait a few days though,” Ingrid murmurs. “See which of the buses come back, if any.”

Sylvain nods. “Okay. So we wait it out here for a few days and we can scout the Community for supplies and stragglers.”

“And then we go to Garreg Mach,” Ingrid says. 

“Yeah.”

She leans away from him. “Do you have a map?”

He yawns and covers his mouth as he nods. “I do, yeah.”

She stands up. “Let’s take a look at it. We should pick the route that is both the easiest and the least mountainous to get there. It won’t be a good idea to go mountain climbing in the middle of winter.”

Sylvain nods. “And then we should sleep.”

Ingrid frowns. “It’s barely afternoon.”

Sylvain shrugs. “It’s safe here and there’s an actual bed. We should get as much rest as we can here.”

Ingrid eyes the bed. “Will we need to keep watch at all?”

Sylvain shakes his head. “I trust the fortifications of this place. We can both just sleep. Keep a weapon close and it’ll be fine.”

Her cheeks pinken slightly and it takes Sylvain a second to realize that he had just suggested that they sleep together. He tries not to feel weird about that fact. It’s just Ingrid, the same Ingrid that he had grown up with in the Community. There shouldn’t be anything different about this, but with the tense atmosphere lingering after the day’s events, it feels a bit different. 

* * *

They wait for four days. None of the Community’s buses return and they don’t find any more survivors. Sylvain teaches Ingrid more about killing Infected, practicing on Commons they find wandering the streets in the outskirts of Fhirdiad. 

He imparts as much of his Hunter’s field training as he can upon her, teaching her to aim for the head and to keep another bullet ready in case the first gets caught or doesn’t get the job done. She proves more than capable of taking down Commons. Her aim is miles better than his from further distances. 

He also teaches her how to take one down with a knife. They wrestle on the floor of the safehouse as Sylvain teaches her to use her body’s weight and size to push back against Commons. 

“Infected will almost always overpower you,” he explains. “They’re physically stronger, so it’s best to focus on agility.”

Ingrid starts leaning over him and Sylvain reaches up, grabbing her shoulder and rolling them. He presses his weight down, using it to trap her beneath him while still giving him an out to bounce up and get away from his attacker. It’s a pretty basic self-defense move that can be used to escape a pin. Once she’s under him, she nods and Sylvain adjusts, getting in position to let her try the same move. She grabs his jacket and rocks up, knocking their shoulders together in a perfect copy of the move he had just executed. 

When he’s flat on his back staring up at her again, he grins. “Not bad.”

Ingrid rolls her eyes before climbing off of him. “Okay, I think I get it.”

“Don’t ever get close if you don’t have to,” Sylvain adds. 

She nods. “I know. Distance is your friend. These are last-ditch efforts.” 

“Good.” He stretches his shoulders out from his position on the floor. “You’ve done well to pick up basically all of the Hunter’s training in like three days.”

Ingrid smiles at him half-heartedly. “I might have a good teacher to thank for at least some of that.”

Sylvain laughs. “I doubt it. Must just be your natural talent.”

She offers him a hand and he takes it, letting her help him up. She turns away to walk over to the bed, grabbing her canteen from the mattress for a drink. Sylvain glances at his watch. It’s getting late in the evening. 

“We should probably get some rest,” he says.

Ingrid nods. “Right. First day of a long journey tomorrow.”

Sylvain is dreading it. He knows that Ingrid is too, but neither of them has said anything to voice their dismay about the trip they have ahead of them. Garreg Mach is over 1200 kilometres from Fhirdiad–close to two months of travel when they factor in stops for resupplying and resting when they need to. 

It’s not good news to know that they’ll probably be arriving mid-winter, but they can’t stay in Fhirdiad. Felix and Dimitri’s bus never returned, so they are both holding out hope that their friends and family will stick to the plan. It’s a plan that they’ve had for years: come back to the Community first and if nothing is left, then go to Garreg Mach. Sylvain has to hope that desperate shouts during the evacuation won’t be the last time he sees Felix or Dimitri. He hopes that they’ll make it to Garreg Mach. 

Out there, they can’t know what waits for them. More Infected, undoubtedly. Maybe, if they’re lucky, they’ll be able to start another car to shorten the trip, but that feels like a pipe dream. 

They’ve plotted out a few small towns that they want to stop in to rest and camp–pulling from what Sylvain remembers of Hunter intel–and which places they’ll probably have to avoid because of previous Community reports of large Infected populations. His stomach spins just thinking about the amount of walking that they’ll have to do. 

“Hey, Ingrid,” he says. 

She turns her head, pausing as she repacks her bag. “Yeah?”

“There’s no one else I’d rather be doing this with.” 

She smiles weakly. “You say that now when we’re not sick of each other.” 

Sylvain smiles back. “We don’t know what’s out there, Ing, but I’ll never be sick of you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And Rachelle you were so much more spot-on than I think you thought you would be ;)


	3. act iii. family

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The journey to Garreg Mach begins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello hello! I'm super excited to bring you guys the next chapter of my Sylvgrid Big Bang. These chapters....are getting longer. I'm not mad about it. 
> 
> If you want to see some fun, no-context previews for the chapters, or even just see me yelling about all the amazing content being produced this month, I'm on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/nicolewrites37) and you should check out the [Sylvgrid Bang Twitter](https://twitter.com/SylvgridBigBang) for all the amazing art + fic round ups. And, of course, you should check out and give some love to my wonderful partner [Fee](https://twitter.com/feliahanakata) for her lovely work that featured in chapter 1. 
> 
> Anyway, without further ado, more zombies~

“Take the shot, Ingrid, it has to be you,” Sylvain urges quietly. 

They are crouched behind the shell of an old car. Sylvain’s hand is resting on Ingrid’s leg. She frowns at him and then risks a peek up over the edge of the car down the street. Her jaw ticks as she watches before quickly ducking back down. She leans against the car and bites her lip. 

“Why me?” Ingrid whispers back. “Can’t you make that shot?”

Sylvain shakes his head. “Ingrid, you’re a way better shot than me. We both know that. Anyone back at the Community could have told us that. I’m fine at close range, but, from this distance, you’re less likely to miss than me and we cannot afford to miss this shot.”

“What happens if I don’t kill it on the first shot?” she asks. 

“Then it comes charging in this direction and we hope that one of us doesn’t miss the second shot.”

Ingrid still looks hesitant, but he seems to have mostly convinced her because she unholsters her pistol. She clips her magazine in and flips the safety off. Sylvain copies her motions, checking his trigger and aligning the sights. The gun is heavy in his hands, but it’s a weight that he is used to. He’s done this maneuver half a dozen times on scouting patrols, but usually, the targets are Commons, not Slashers. He knows that Ingrid can make this shot, but he still needs to be ready in case she misses. 

“Can you take a look?” she requests. 

Sylvain nods and shifts, pressing one knee to the asphalt and peering over the edge of the car. The Infected is still where they had first seen it, lumbering aimlessly across the main street in southern Fhirdiad. Ingrid had pointed it out first and Sylvain had immediately pulled them behind cover. He had almost knocked them both over, but Ingrid’s quick reflexes saved them from that fate. 

At first, they both thought it was a Sprinter, a mutated Infected that was twice as fast as a Common but not as strong. Unfortunately, they aren't that lucky. Instead of either of the weaker types of Infected, they are dealing with a Slasher.

Ingrid huffs again. “And you’re sure we can’t avoid it?”

Sylvain nods. “Trust me, Ing. If we try to go around it and that thing sees us? We’re done.” Slashers are vicious loners with the speed of Sprinters and the hunting instincts of Clickers. 

In all of his Hunter training, Sylvain was taught that Slashers were one of the most dangerous types of Infected. Your best hope when facing one was to either hide and wait it out or to get the drop on it and take it out quickly. He had considered waiting this one out, but it’s in the middle of the main road out of Fhirdiad that they need to follow.

He knows that Ingrid can make the necessary shot; it’s just a matter of whether or not she believes that she can. Since the first day that they had taken shelter in the safehouse, Ingrid has killed six more Commons around the safehouse, but they haven’t seen anything stronger than a Common until now. 

Sylvain reaches out to squeeze her arm, drawing her eyes to his. “Hey, Ingrid, you can do this.”

She takes a deep breath. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

Sylvain straightens up first, resting his elbow against the fender of the car. The Slasher is, thankfully, facing away from him and Sylvain nods to Ingrid. She gets into position next to him, taking aim carefully at its head. She curls and uncurls her fingers over the handle of the gun, inhaling slowly. She pulls the trigger and there’s a loud bang as her gun fires. 

Her shot hits the Slasher in the head. The side and front of its face explode in a burst of black and grey, scattering skin, flesh, and grey matter onto the pavement as it crumples. Sylvain takes his shot anyway, his own bullet sinking into its torso where it lies prone and unmoving on the asphalt. Ingrid lets out a shaky breath and slowly lowers her weapon, keeping her eyes trained on the Slasher. 

“We got it,” she says quietly. 

Sylvain puts an arm around her and squeezes her shoulder reassuringly. “You got it,” he says. “I knew you could.”

Ingrid nods. “We should move. The gunshots have probably alerted any other Infected in the area.”

He holsters his gun, brushing his hands off. “You’re right. Let’s get moving and see if we can’t find a car to get out here with.” Sylvain offers her a hand. 

Ingrid accepts his help up, looking over her shoulder to scan the area around them. “And none of these cars are worth trying to salvage?”

Sylvain shakes his head. “No, we want something already outside of the city because of the barriers that are set up.”

They don’t get lucky this time. None of the cars on the other side of Fhirdiad’s spiked barrier have tires that aren’t flat or a working engine. Sylvain knows he burns precious daylight trying to start a car. It’s hard not to–the idea that they could shorten their trip is an idea worth pursuing. 

During their ninth attempt at starting an engine, Ingrid leans in the driver’s side window to where Sylvain is sitting in the driver’s seat, looking frustrated. “We should just get a move on. There’s that campsite at the edge of the city limits that we should try to reach before it gets dark.”  
  
She steps away so Sylvain can climb out of the car. He doesn’t bother shutting the door behind him. “Yeah,” he says, “let’s go.”

Ingrid leads as they walk down the abandoned highway, her figure glowing in the morning light. They have to vault over piled-up cars or erected barricades occasionally, but they don’t see any Infected or any survivors. They fall into an easy system: Sylvain boosting Ingrid up when they reach barricades so that she can check the other side. Then, she’ll reach down and pull him up. 

The day is long and boring, but Sylvain finds himself with a shortage of quips to lighten the mood. The tension in Ingrid’s shoulders seems to worsen the further they get from the Community. He decides against trying to force a joke and focuses on simply helping Ingrid climb over piled up cars. By the time they reach the outskirts of the city, the sun is almost dipping beneath the horizon. 

Dusk has set in fully by the time they reach the campsite Ingrid had marked on the map. Sylvain stabs and guts one Common near the gate while Ingrid shoots the one that lumbers out the woods as it follows the dying cries of the first. Sylvain suggests that they take shelter in the campsite’s check-in booth. It’s small, but the door works and it's just big enough that they can lay down on the floor, feeling mostly sheltered and safe. After a glimpse at the way that nature has started reclaiming the rest of the campsite, she agrees that the booth is their best option. 

Sylvain barricades the door for the night, lodging a folding chair beneath the handle and bracing it with his bag, as Ingrid lays out the one bedroll they’ve brought with them and starts sorting their rations for the evening. When he finishes wedging the chair under the doorknob as the last defence, he turns to her. He studies her; her long, heavy, blonde hair is gathered up in a ponytail today. There’s also a streak of black on her cheek that might be just dirt or blood from an Infected. 

“Ingrid,” he says. 

Her hands still and she looks up, tilting her head. “What?”

“You have,” he mumbles, motioning to her cheek. 

Ingrid makes a face and scrubs at it with the cuff of Glenn’s jacket. She’s hardly taken the jacket off since she put it on and every time he looks at it, Sylvain feels awful. She seems to be taking Glenn’s death particularly harshly, which isn’t unfair in the slightest, and he wonders what would have happened if he had traded places with Glenn.

Sylvain and Glenn, objectively, are fairly similar. Glenn was a little taller and Sylvain a little stronger, but they had been through the same Hunter’s training. The main difference, Sylvain realizes, is that Glenn had been Ingrid’s boyfriend. That’s an emotional connection to her that Sylvain doesn’t have. He and Ingrid are good friends–best friends, even–but Glenn had been her partner. Sylvain wonders if she would feel better with Glenn here instead of him. 

“What are you thinking about?” Ingrid asks, cutting through his distraction. 

He shakes the thought away and settles on the floor next to her, crossing his legs. “Just things,” he answers vaguely. 

Ingrid holds the can of corn close to herself and frowns at him. “Sylvain.”

“Ingrid,” he parrots.

She huffs, but then extends the food to him, following it with a plastic fork. Sylvain takes the can and the fork, but hesitates before eating anything. 

Sylvain drums his fingers on the outside of the can idly, carefully considering his next words. “I think you would have been better off with literally anyone else but me,” Sylvain confesses.

Ingrid looks surprised for a moment. “What?”

“Felix, Glenn–they were both better at this kind of stuff than me. And Dimitri’s just Dimitri. He’s impossible to feel bad around. Plus he’s as strong as an ox.”

“Well, I’m not with them,” Ingrid snaps. Her green eyes are sharp and almost grey in the glowing evening light. “I’m with you and we’re not going to think about hypotheticals, alright? Because you’d sure as hell be better off with one of them too, but we’re not going to go there, okay?”

Sylvain’s lips curl into a small smile at Ingrid’s stubbornness. He’s always admired her spirit. 

He glances towards the boarded-up window of the booth as if he could see through the boards back towards the Fhirdiad city skyline. 

“We really left the city, didn’t we?”

Ingrid sobers a bit, stirring her fork through her own can. “Yeah, we did.” She places her food down and pulls the map out of Glenn’s old bag. She unfolds it, setting it on the bedroll between them. “We’re here,” she says, pointing out the campsite. “Tomorrow, we’ll want to get about halfway here,” she continues, gesturing to a mark on the highway between Fhirdiad and the next small town over. “Then, we can make it the rest of the way into town and hopefully we can resupply.”

Sylvain nods. “We’re going to need more winter gear.” He glances at his own bag and the knife tucked safely on the outside of it. “I wouldn’t mind a bigger knife too,” he adds. “Maybe something with a bit more reach.”

Ingrid laughs. “What are you expecting? A cavalry lance? That’s a bit of a stretch, wouldn’t you say?”

Sylvain smiles. “A man can dream, right?” He taps the small town marked as a supply point. “Besides, I’m pretty sure there’s an outdoor equipment store here. It would be a good place to restock everything. Assuming, of course, that it hasn’t been picked entirely clean.”

Ingrid hums in agreement and then refolds the map, running her thumb along each crease slowly. “Do you think they’ll make it Garreg Mach?” she asks him. “All this talk of ‘meet you there’ all these years and now just looking at how far we have to go,” she trails off, shaking her head. “I dunno, Sylvain, it just seems like a lofty hope.”

“Hey,” he says, reaching out to take her hand. “I thought we got the doubt out of our systems. We can’t afford to think like that. We can just keep moving and stay safe and hope that they know to do the same. Felix and Dimitri are survivors, you know that. So are the rest of them.”

Ingrid tightens the grip on his hand. “Yeah, I know,” she mumbles. She looks down at the bedroll and slides back so that she’s sitting on the floor next to it, dropping his hands. “You should sleep first. I know you didn’t get much sleep last night. I can take the first watch.”

Sylvain wants to argue with her, but she’s right. He didn’t sleep well the night before–dreaming of their encounter with the Hunter back in the woods. He’d been having dreams about the incident since it had occurred, but last night had gifted him a plethora of horrid visions: the Hunter shooting Ingrid, the Clicker devouring Ingrid, or him getting Infected and Turning Ingrid himself. 

Sylvain strips out of his jacket and tosses it over his bag before he lays down on the bedroll. “Ingrid,” he says. She looks down at him. 

“What is it?”

“I’m glad it’s you, you know,” he says and then he rolls away from her, feeling warmth prick his ears and cheeks. 

She doesn’t say anything in response so Sylvain lets his tiredness overtake his uncertain embarrassment as he fades into sleep. 

* * *

The two days it takes to get to the next town are slow-going, tense, and exhausting. Sylvain sleeps with one hand on his weapon and the other on the ground between him and Ingrid. They take turns keeping watch and, thankfully, they aren’t disturbed by anything or anyone. 

The road into town is torn up in places, but mostly clear of cars. Most of the buildings at the edge are small rundown houses or the occasional boarded-up stores–nothing worth stopping for–so they continue further into town. Sylvain has never been here before, but he knows that the town’s mall was marked on scouting reports from some of the farther-reaching Hunting patrols. 

Ingrid stops dead in her tracks to stare at the ugly, two-story building made mostly of concrete and decorated with dirty, faded paint. There’s a large parking lot that stretches between them and the entrance is filled with cars, some of which might even start. Sylvain’s lips turn up at the confused look on her face. He’s sure she knows what the building is, but he doubts that she’s ever seen anything quite like it. 

“It’s a mall,” Sylvain explains. “A cluster of shops. Come on, I think there’s a supply store here. Could be a great place to pick up some winter gear.”

Ingrid looks between him and the mall suspiciously, but then sighs. “I guess. Couldn’t everything be long gone? Plus, this seems like the kind of place where there would be Infected too.”

Sylvain grabs her by the arm and starts dragging her across the parking lot. The hope of a getaway vehicle makes him optimistic enough to widely grin at Ingrid. 

“Haven’t you ever wanted to go on a shopping spree? To just take whatever you want? Now’s the time.”

Ingrid rolls her eyes, but his lighthearted tone does seem to have cheered her up at least some. She smiles at him in that way that tells him she’s annoyed but not actually mad at him so his grin widens as they approach the entrance to the mall. 

The front doors were once sliding doors, but the glass is shattered and the metal frames are bent like someone had tried to drive a car through them. Sylvain and Ingrid slowly pick their way inside, their hands hovering over their weapons as they listen for sounds further inside the mall. There are no immediately threatening sounds, so Sylvain gives himself a moment to look around and appreciate what they’ve stumbled across. 

The mall is almost completely destroyed near the entrance and the smaller boutiques are beat up and completely looted. The power is out too, so their only light is the daylight filtering in through large broken windows on the top level of the mall. Ingrid seems completely awed by their surroundings and Sylvain falls behind her a step, just watching her reaction. It’s charming. 

He spies a knocked over map kiosk nearby and waves Ingrid over to it. Despite the faded, half-destroyed map, they manage to locate what looks like a department store of some kind on the easternmost side of the mall. Sylvain points out a lingerie shop and Ingrid slugs him in the arm hard enough that it actually hurts. 

“Hey!” he complains. “It was just a joke.” 

She huffs. “Yeah, well it was kind of stupid. We shouldn’t waste too much time here.”

Sylvain looks around them. The mall is abandoned and silent. “Ingrid, not to be overly optimistic, but this place looks empty! I think we’ll be safe here. We can probably restock at the department store, reset our gear and crash here for the night. You saw those clouds outside too: those mean rain.”

Ingrid contemplates his point. “We don’t know that it’s empty here,” she counters. “Though, we _could_ hole up and wait out the rain.” She crosses her arms, frowning like she doesn’t want to concede to him, but then she sighs heavily. “Fine. Let’s go check out this department store first. There might be _something_ useful there.”

Sylvain lets Ingrid lead the way through the abandoned mall, but he keeps up a quiet running commentary about the states of some of the shops. He pulls a few laughs from her which makes him feel victorious, but Ingrid is remarkably goal-focused when she wants to be. It’s an admirable trait and one that would have made her a great Hunter. He tries not to think about that as they climb carefully over a tossed food cart that’s blocking the way down one of the paths to the department store. 

Sylvain jumps down first, Ingrid following him. She stumbles and he steadies her, righting her on her feet. She nods to him in thanks. Ingrid takes the lead again after that and they finally find the entrance to the department store. Whatever it used to be called, the sign is long destroyed or stolen.

“Shall we?” he asks, waving a hand forward. 

Ingrid draws her gun. “After you,” she replies, her voice teasing. 

Sylvain winks at her. “Aw, look at you, letting the gentleman take the lead.”

“You’re not exactly a model gentleman, so maybe that’s why I feel safe letting you lead,” she rebuffs easily. 

Sylvain fakes heartbreak before leading the way into the store. Like most of the other places here, it’s pretty ransacked, but based purely on the size of the store, he figures that they’ll be able to find something that can still be useful to them. He almost reneges on that thought when the first mostly-intact display they come across is a rack of glitzy, floor-length dresses. 

He pauses, staring at them and Ingrid puts a hand on her hip. “Dresses? I didn’t know that was standard survival gear for Hunters.”

Sylvain laughs. “Aw, come on. Haven’t you ever wondered what it would have been like to have lived before all of this? When you could be a silly girl and wear a fancy dress and go to some kind of school dance? That would have been fun.”

Ingrid fidgets with the end of her heavy braid as her expression softens. She seems to consider the idea more than Sylvain had expected her to, but he doesn’t point it out, preserving the moment. 

“Probably would have spent the whole night making sure you didn’t do anything stupid,” she says finally. 

Sylvain chuckles. “Nah, you would have danced the night away with Glenn. I probably could have stolen you for one or two dances, but not many.”

Ingrid’s face falls and Sylvain smacks his forehead. Before his idiotic comment, Ingrid had been smiling, almost leaning into the idea, but now her lips are pursed and her brow furrowed. She looks like the Ingrid that scolds him after finding him in a dark corner with a nameless girl. He’s stupid. He’s so incredibly fucking stupid because everything had been fine. She had been lightening up! But, then he had to bring up the dead boyfriend like an idiot and now the mood is completely ruined. He tries to salvage it by linking his arm through Ingrid’s and guiding her away from the rack of dresses. 

“We should probably look for winter coats,” he says quickly. “Or maybe just stuff we can layer.”

The survivalist in Ingrid seems to restart at his words and she nods, snapping back to herself. “Warmer pants, better socks, a hat,” she lists. 

Sylvain nods and glances down at the clothes he’s wearing. “Maybe I’ll find a spare pair of pants.”

Ingrid considers something. “I wonder if there would be a new bra.”

He laughs. “Wouldn’t that be something.”

As it turns out, the women’s section is on the upper floor, while the men’s clothing department is on the main floor. They pause in front of the stairs that lead up to the second floor. It takes Sylvain a moment to realize that if they split up, it will be the first time that they have really been apart since the Community went to shit. The idea is kind of terrifying, even if they would only be splitting up for a few minutes. It will save them time though. 

“Sylvain?” Ingrid questions, putting a hand on her hip. She has walked three steps up the stairs and now looks down at him. “Are you okay?”

He shakes his head to clear his thoughts. “Yeah!” he says hurriedly. “I’m good.” He stays at the bottom of the stairs. “Do you want to split up? It’ll save us time if you’re still feeling anxious about being here.”

Ingrid considers it. “I guess we could.” She looks around, noting the emptiness of the store. “It would save time,” she echoes. Ingrid climbs another step, her hand curling around the railing. “Okay. There’s a changing room on the second floor if you want to split up and meet back there in like twenty minutes?”

Sylvain nods even though his stomach tells him no. He doesn’t want to split up with Ingrid at all, but he knows that it is the best use of their time to divide and conquer. He steps away from the stairs towards the men’s section and Ingrid climbs another two stairs higher. 

“Don’t do anything stupid,” she says awkwardly before she turns and walks away, ascending the stairs until she disappears from his view. 

Sylvain watches her leave for a minute before he huffs a sigh and turns to focus on himself. He heads to the men’s section, ignoring the needling doubt in his stomach that says that he has just made a terrible mistake. He keeps one hand over his gun as he wanders through the store and an ear out for danger, but it truly does appear like they’re alone. 

The first area of men’s clothing that he finds is an underwear display and Sylvain almost laughs in delight. He takes as many clean pairs of underwear as he can find and sifts out any that aren’t his size. Next, he finds a rack of thin, mostly cheap t-shirts. He foregoes those. 

He manages to pick up a thin fleece sweater that will layer nicely under his jacket and two wool long-sleeved shirts that will be helpful in the next few months as winter starts to set in. Just because they’re headed south doesn’t mean that it’s going to get any warmer. Garreg Mach is surrounded by a mountain range after all–a mountain range that will be absolute shit to navigate. 

Sylvain spends a bit of time going through the pants section of the menswear department, but he mostly finds expensive jeans or dress pants that aren’t at all practical for the kind of travelling they’re going to be doing so he moves on, satisfied with the heavy-duty pants he had worn upon the escape from the Community. 

Sylvain wonders what it might have been like to outfit an entire Community with a store like this. Back in Fhirdiad, the city had been big enough that all major malls and outlets were thoroughly looted almost immediately after the outbreaks had occurred, leaving not a lot to scrounge up years after the Infection had gripped society. A place like this, though? This is a gold mine. It’s almost suspicious that it isn’t completely looted and destroyed. 

With his pack filled, Sylvain wanders back towards the stairs that lead to the second floor to meet back up with Ingrid. He ends up walking through the completely destroyed and ravaged jewellery section where he actually does stop to check out a few of the sales desks. 

Sylvain leans over one counter, squinting through broken, dirty glass at a display of obviously fake rings. He carefully reaches through, picking one up at random. He holds it up, admiring it under non-obstructed light. It looks a bit like a ring that Sylvain had seen Glenn pocket on a mission a few months back. 

Glenn was planning on proposing to Ingrid on Career Day. It should have been a day of celebration for multiple reasons. Obviously, that hasn’t gone to plan, and Sylvain is almost glad for it. It would have been incredibly awkward if Glenn had tried to propose at the same time that Ingrid had wanted to end the relationship. 

He studies the ring again. Ingrid is more than a little practical, more so than he is for sure, but he wonders if she would have said yes if Glenn had asked, even if she had been intending to break up with him. Being engaged, being _married,_ to Glenn would have made it easier for her to change the Educator role she had been given, especially if Glenn vouched for her. 

Sylvain shakes his head. It’s a stupid thought that really, _really_ doesn’t matter anymore. Glenn is dead, the Community is gone and Sylvain and Ingrid are on their own. He tosses the ring back into the broken display and checks his watch. They had agreed to meet upstairs in twenty minutes. He isn’t exactly sure how much time has passed, but he supposes that he’s waited long enough. 

He climbs the stairs to the second floor two at a time, repeating his careful environment assessment as he reaches the second floor. Thankfully, everything seems quiet up here too. Sylvain leaves his gun holstered, but he does draw his knife just in case. He follows the broken, barely hanging signs that direct him to the changing rooms when he hears someone muttering. 

He hesitates, his hand tightening around the hilt of his knife. It sounds like Ingrid, but he has no way to know that unless he actually sees her and he doesn’t want to call out to her on the off chance that she’s not alone. His stomach twists and he curses himself for letting them split up in the first place. He had promised to keep her safe and he has no idea what he’s going to do if she’s not alone. 

Sylvain takes a deep breath before stepping silently into the changing area and immediately stops short. Ingrid is standing across the room from him, shirtless, staring into a mirror with a scrutinizing look on her face as she studies her appearance. Her hands smooth down over a toned, muscled stomach and Sylvain suddenly feels like a very, very stupid teenaged boy. 

He is about to open his mouth and say something incredibly idiotic–the kind of idiotic that Ingrid lectures him about after he pisses off some girl’s older brother–when Ingrid’s gaze lifts the tiniest bit to catch his eye in the mirror. For a moment, nothing happens. Sylvain feels a blush creep up the back of his neck as he, for some reason, _keeps staring at her_. Then, suddenly, Ingrid lets out a very un-Ingrid screech and ducks into the changing stall, yanking a curtain across the entrance. 

“Sylvain!” she yelps through the curtain. “How long have you been standing there?”

Sylvain blinks stupidly and slowly walks over, dragging his feet, until he is standing on the opposite side of the curtain from her. He can just barely see the tips of her boots under the curtain, so he knows that she is facing him, but she is probably horribly embarrassed. Sylvain himself is feeling embarrassed enough and he wasn’t the one not wearing a shirt. They’re friends and they’ve probably seen each other topless before, but something about this context–them, alone, in an abandoned shopping mall where there are mirrors–that feels wildly different from the hurried changing of clothes elsewhere. 

“It was like four seconds, don’t worry, Ingrid,” he reassures. 

There’s a rustling sound before the curtain draws back suddenly and Sylvain is face-to-face with Ingrid who is now, _thankfully_ , wearing a shirt. She’s wearing a black turtleneck that clings to her curves and Sylvain wants to not be weird about it, but it’s kind of attractive. Her face is still beet red and she doesn’t meet his gaze.

It’s not a new discovery to him that Ingrid is attractive, but it’s a new situation to be placed in such close quarters with his wildly attractive best friend while there are literally no other people around them. Specifically, there are no boyfriends who are also childhood friends. 

Sylvain forces a smile and gives Ingrid an assessing look. “It’s nothing to worry about, Ing. I see you found some new clothes.”

Ingrid shrugs, playing with the hem of her new shirt. “It’s soft and it’s wool. It’ll layer nicely and it can also be warm on its own.”

Sylvain nods. “Wool is great,” he agrees. “I’ve got a few of my own. Did you have any luck with coats?”

Ingrid shakes her head. “Seems like coats were probably one of the first things to go when places like this were raided.” She still looks skittish. He chalks it up to his sudden and probably unwanted interruption. 

Sylvain leans against the side of the changing stall. “I figured they would be, but it’s always worth looking.” Ingrid nods and Sylvain waves vaguely towards her jacket. “Well, at least your jacket is plenty big for layering underneath. You could probably tuck your knees up into it and it would still fit.”

Ingrid shoves his arm, unbalancing him. He tips back ungracefully and grabs the frame of the stall as he slips, catching himself before he falls flat on his ass. The plaster cracks under his grip and Sylvain’s eyebrows shoot up. It gives–he yelps dramatically–and gravity takes over, sending him tumbling straight to the ground.

He hears Ingrid cough through the dust that’s released when the dividing wall breaks before she breaks out laughing. Sylvain waves away a puff of the dust surrounding his head, smiling at her stupidly from the ground. 

“That was not what I expected to happen,” he mutters. 

Ingrid smothers her giggles and offers him a hand up. Sylvain takes it, letting her haul him up to his feet. He pats her shoulder and she shrugs him off, rolling her eyes. 

“Honestly, with our luck, I’m not surprised,” Ingrid says. That nervous edge creeps into her tone again. 

Sylvain laughs. “Oh come on. We haven’t been entirely unlucky, have we? We made it back to the Community, we had the safehouse in Fhirdiad, we were able to stay at that park booth on the way here, and we haven’t run into anyone here.”

Ingrid’s expression sobers suddenly and he frowns. He crosses his arms and studies her face. Her expression is a mixture of doubt with a hint of fear and Sylvain is no longer a little worried. He’s concerned. 

“What did you see, Ingrid?”

She shifts, biting her lip. “On the wall in the outerwear section, there are carved meeting points around the mall.”

“Fuck,” Sylvain mutters. “I had a funny feeling that this place was too good to be true.”

“Do you think it’s a community of sorts?” she asks. 

Sylvain shakes his head, frowning. “No, meeting points like that don’t say “Community” to me.”

Ingrid sighs, picking up the implication. “Raiders.”

“Yeah,” Sylvain mutters. “It’s probably Raiders. The mall is probably where they operate which means we should get out of here as soon as we can.”

Ingrid straightens her shirt, looking over her shoulder at the folded pile of clothes on the bench. She’ll probably need a minute. “I just have to pack these things up.”

Sylvain nods. “Okay, well, I can keep watch near the stairs while you do that. Come find me when you’re done and we’ll get the hell out of here.” He takes a step back but then pauses, shooting her a reassuring smile. “Maybe we can make one of those cars in the parking lot work. I was hopeful about them earlier and it would make for a badass exit.”

* * *

Ingrid’s hands shake as she repacks her bag with her newly acquired clothes. As embarrassing as it had been when Sylvain had walked in on her, her mind had been elsewhere. Really, she was thinking of the message she’d found in the outerwear section. 

It wasn’t the meet-up points that had unnerved her. It had been the symbol carved into the wall next to them, marking the map as someone’s property. She was unnerved by the illustration of the creepy-looking eye that Ingrid knows is associated with someone that she really, really doesn’t want to run into again. Ever.

The Sons of Gautier.

They were an anarchist group led by Sylvain’s older brother Miklan and had been driven out of the Community almost a year ago after they were discovered plotting to kill the Community Leader, Lambert Blaiddyd. 

Lambert, Dimitri’s father, and Andre Gautier, Sylvain’s father, had worked together to root out as many of the Sons of Gautier as they could: condemning their group’s name and banishing them from the Community. The exile process had been a complete mess on many fronts, especially since Miklan’s supporters had tried to murder Sylvain on the night of Miklan’s exiling. 

Ingrid remembers being shaken awake by Felix that night. Glenn and Sylvain had been on watch together when they were attacked and it was only thanks to luck that another Hunting patrol found them before the Sons of Gautier were able to do more than stab Sylvain and knock Glenn unconscious, giving him a fairly serious concussion. It was luck that saved Glenn and Sylvain that night. The Sons of Gautier, however exiled they seemed to be, still terrify Ingrid. 

She was terrified when Sylvain confessed to her that there were Hunters that supported Miklan back on the bus. She hadn’t hesitated to join him in getting as far away from the situation as possible, even if it had been horrifying and guilt-inducing to leave the rest of the survivors behind.

She is terrified that she has led Sylvain to this mall: a place where his brother might be operating. The thought of Sylvain running into his murderous older brother is enough to make her stomach turn so violently she almost pukes. She knows how that encounter would go. She _can’t_ let that encounter play out. She sighs as she shoves the rest of her things back into her bag and draws her gun.

Ingrid jogs across the top floor of the department store to where Sylvain is supposed to meet her. She can hear her heart pounding in her chest. The terror of leaving him alone is starting to panic her and she regrets letting him leave the changing area without her, even if it had meant that he would have seen her without a shirt again. 

She almost trips into a clothing rack as she runs, her foot clanging against the metal bar, kicking it instead. She immediately freezes before dropping into a crouch, hiding behind the rack of women’s blazers. She holds her breath and listens. At first, she hears nothing. It’s relieving. It means that she and Sylvain are probably alone. 

The relief doesn’t last long. It withers away as soon as she hears Sylvain’s voice. 

“Come on guys, surely we can all be friends, right? I know we have a mutual friend out there somewhere.” Sylvain’s tone is light and baiting. 

Ingrid covers her own mouth so that she doesn’t cry out in her panic. She carefully inches forward on the ground, trying not to so much as bump the clothing rack she’s hiding behind. It’s difficult to get an angle on whoever Sylvain is talking to, but she attempts to anyway. 

She hears a faint, grumbled response to Sylvain’s taunt before she manages to get a line of sight. It’s not reassuring to know that someone has cornered him, but at least she can be relieved it doesn’t sound like Miklan himself has found his younger brother. 

Ingrid risks peeking out around the edge of the coat rack and sees Sylvain encircled by three men and one woman wearing what look like hand-built tactical gear decorated heavily with the Sons of Gautier’s eye emblem. Her stomach sinks as she studies the situation. 

From what she can see, Sylvain has removed his backpack and his jacket, having tossed them to the feet of one of the men surrounding him. She assumes that his weapons have all been confiscated as well. The man closest to Sylvain is holding a nail-studded baseball bat and Ingrid almost cringes at the cliche weapon. 

The woman and one of the other men are holding heavy-duty weaponry: rifles only the most elite Hunters are equipped with. The last man holds a machete and that’s the one that terrifies her. Guns are the easiest tool to fight off Infected with. They let you maintain space and take out threats from a safe distance. A machete, on the other hand, involves close-quarters fighting. Any person that wields a machete as their weapon of choice is automatically frightening. It means they’re confident enough in their skills to get up close and personal with an Infected. 

The machete is also the weapon of choice of every insane serial killer in the books that Ingrid had read as a child. Those stereotypical slasher-killers are always entirely psychotic. Her hand clenches so tightly on the grip of her gun that it almost hurts as she watches the Machete Man sneer at Sylvain. She wants Sylvain to be as far away as possible from a man who, one, might be connected to Sylvain’s bastard brother, and, two– _once again_ –might be completely insane!

Sylvain is still talking to the men, chattering on as he blatantly stalls for time when the woman steps forward, jabbing the mouth of her gun against his chest. Sylvain shuts up abruptly and Ingrid has just enough of an angle to see recognition flit across the woman’s face. Ingrid nearly whimpers when the weapon butts against Sylvain’s chest. Her hand slackens on the handle of her weapon and she nearly drops it. She swallows heavily, leaning into the coat rack, as she steadies and silences herself

“You’re Miklan’s little brother,” she snarls. “You’re the fuck that got us all caught back in Fhirdiad.”

There’s a click from the gun and Ingrid covers her mouth–her muscles seizing in terror as she goes completely rigid, her heartbeat pounding through her ears–and waits for the gunshot. 

It doesn’t come. 

The man holding the machete has pushed the barrel of the gun away, scowling at the woman. “Don’t shoot the boss’s brother. I’m sure he’ll want the honour of doing that himself.”

Sylvain grins. “So he is still alive! And here I was hoping that some Slasher would have taken his head off by now.” He sighs in mock wistfulness and Ingrid wants to slap him. If they survive this, she _will_ slap him.

She has no idea what he’s thinking, antagonizing the people that have him completely surrounded with weapons when his only backup is a terrified woman hiding behind a clothing rack with only a pistol to her name. Even if she shoots to kill, she can maybe hit two of the men before the other two either return fire at her or kill Sylvain. 

If she takes out the two with guns, Sylvain will most likely die by machete. If she doesn’t take out both of the gunmen, then both she and Sylvain will die to rifle rounds. She’s in a spot that she hasn’t the faintest idea how to get out of and she’s pretty sure that she’d rather cry than deal with the way that things are unfolding in front of her. 

When she’s sure that all of the attention is focused on Sylvain and his loud mouth, she takes a risk and creeps forward, moving to the next rack of clothing, getting about four feet closer. Sylvain’s eyes flash in her direction, but he quickly looks away, trying not to draw attention to her. Good, he knows where she is. 

The man with the machete leans into Sylvain’s face. “While I would love to kill you myself, you fuck, I almost want to see your brother dismember you. Maybe he’ll let me feed you to the Infected after he takes your arms and legs off.” The man spins the machete menacingly and Ingrid’s heart leaps into her throat. 

Sylvain smiles, practicing his irritatingly calm bravado. “Hmm, you can try to kill me, but I don’t think the squad of Hunters waiting just out there,” he points out the west wall, “will take too kindly to that.”

Ingrid wants to scream. Sylvain just lost her almost every chance to get the drop on these assholes. She has no idea how the hell she’s supposed to take out one of these people, much less all four. 

The man with the bat and the woman’s gazes both follow Sylvain’s pointing hand to the wall. The bat-wielding thug looks almost worried for a moment. 

“We don’t have eyes out on the west side,” Nail-Studded-Bat-Man says. “There could be a whole group of Hunters out there and we wouldn’t know.”

“Shut up,” Machete-Man snarls, staring Sylvain down. He jabs Sylvain’s shoulder with an accusing finger. “What do you mean when you say there is a Hunter squad waiting for you?”

Sylvain smirks, playing up his act. “Oh, come on, you didn’t really think that you could leave those last few members behind, did you? We know all about your little plan to take the Community back. We’ve known the whole time.”

He’s lying out his ass now, taunting them, and he’s obviously trying to give Ingrid more of a chance to come up with some kind of daring rescue plan or to get herself as far away as she can. The second option isn’t even worth considering. There is no way in hell she’s abandoning Sylvain here to a bunch of thugs that work for his brother. 

Sylvain doesn’t back down from the challenge laid in front of him and Ingrid wants to sock his teeth out. She weighs her options–shoot, stay, scream–but doesn’t get a chance to do anything before he continues speaking. 

“They sent me in here because they knew that I’d be the one to draw a crowd while they worked on other areas of the mall,” Sylvain taunts. 

The man with the machete finally turns away from Sylvain, snarling under his breath. “Fucking shit. We don’t have a way to know if he’s telling the truth?” he asks the gunman. 

The thug shakes his head. “No. We have no way of confirming.”

Machete-Man turns to Nail-Studded-Bat-Man and Gun-Woman. “You two, go check the western wall.” He turns back to Sylvain sneering. “I am going to go get the boss so he can deal with you himself, you fuck.” He waves his hand at the last gunman. “Don’t let this fucker move but don’t kill him yet.”

The three raiders take off down the stairs back to the first floor of the department store as Ingrid holds her breath. It’s an opportunity and she has to take it. She counts to eight in her head, looking between Sylvain and the place where the other three disappeared before she starts slowly creeping out of her cover. 

Her hand is shaking on her gun, but she knows she only has one shot. Sylvain is still smiling at the gunman and keeping the man’s attention fixed on him, but she does catch the briefest darting of her friend’s eyes towards her as she leaves cover. 

Gun-Man catches Sylvain’s slip and raises his gun, scowling. “The fuck you looking at?” he demands loudly. 

The man turns to look back over his shoulder and Ingrid takes the opportunity she is given. The pistol kicks in her hand as it fires and her shot catches the man in the head. He crumples with a sick thud. 

Sylvain doesn’t hesitate to scoop up his bag and jacket with one hand and sling them over his back. His gun is nowhere to be seen, but that’s the least of their worries right now. He sprints to Ingrid and grabs her hand, yanking her away from the body–the body _she had killed_ –to dash down the stairs to the main floor. Ingrid almost reaches for the man’s dropped gun, but the necessity to _get the fuck out of there_ overrides that instinct and she lets Sylvain drag her behind him.

The sound of her gunshot will draw back the thugs that had just left so they need to get as far away as possible and hide. 

They burst out of the department store into the main part of the mall and Sylvain immediately starts hurrying into a toy store that’s next to the department store. They step through the shattered storefront and rush to the store’s rear as Ingrid hears the first shouts, probably the other thugs who didn’t get too far away. 

Sylvain drags her through the pitch dark toy store until they reach the very back. He pushes her behind the sales counter and crowds himself down beside her. Ingrid grabs his arms and pulls him closer to her as they hunch down quietly, breathing shallowly. Sylvain’s eyes are narrowed and the brown of them is almost black in the gloom. 

He leans towards her suddenly, bumping their foreheads together in silent thanks. He would have been dead without her and they both know it. His jaw is clenched and the skin of his forehead is clammy. Ingrid tries to move her hand to grab Sylvain’s only to realize that she’s still clutching her gun tightly, her hand wrapped so tightly around its grip that her knuckles are white. Sylvain immediately rubs at the back of her hand, massaging it and urging her to slowly loosen her grip. 

He takes the gun from her as soon as her hand opens and flicks the safety on, setting it on the ground between them. Ingrid clutches at his hands and then she tilts her head back against the wood of the counter they’re hunched behind and listens. 

There are people shouting from in and around the department store–Ingrid picks out a minimum of five voices, but her racing heart blends them together–and pounding footsteps that are a lot closer than she would like them to be. The raiders shout to each other, spreading out as they look for Sylvain. Ingrid pulls a hand free to press it over her mouth as she breathes out a shaky breath. 

She can still feel the gun kicking in her hands and how heavy it had been when she had taken the shot. She hadn’t even hesitated. She had killed someone. Pulling the trigger back in the department store had been functionally the same as when she had done so to kill the Common that attacked Sylvain in Fhirdiad. In the time since the Community fell, Sylvain has taught her quite a bit about killing Infected and she had killed her fair share on the way out of Fhirdiad, including the Slasher. So, in theory, taking the shot to protect Sylvain shouldn’t have been any different, but her stomach is twisted in a way it isn’t usually. 

Killing a human, _murdering_ a human, had felt different. 

The man was clearly a horrible person. He had been running with Miklan and the Sons of Gautier, but that doesn’t change the fact that he’d been alive and that Ingrid had killed him when he hadn’t even been Infected. 

She doesn’t realize she’s crying until Sylvain drops her other hand and wraps her tightly in his arms, letting her muffle herself against her hand and his shoulder just in case she dares make more sound. It feels like the world is tunnelling because she’s not getting enough oxygen. 

She doesn’t dare try to take deeper breaths because she has no idea how close the Sons of Gautier are to them. A few voices have gotten louder, but it doesn’t sound like any have entered the toy store where they’ve taken refuge. Ingrid is almost relieved until Sylvain goes completely rigid against her and her heart leaps into her throat again. 

“What the fuck do you mean that my brother is here?” Miklan Gautier snarls, his voice loud and much closer than Ingrid feels comfortable being to Sylvain’s murderous brother. 

“We caught him snooping around upstairs. Took this off of him.” That voice is Machete-Man and Ingrid drops her hand from her mouth, holding her breath as she starts rubbing circles into Sylvain’s shoulder, trying to get him to relax. 

“What’s my bitch of a brother doing this far south of Fhirdiad?”

“Made some claim about the Hunters being here to hunt us down. Apparently they’re on the west side.”

Miklan lets out a low, angry growl. “So you fucking diverted the people who were babysitting my brother to check the west side, leaving him with just one guard and you didn’t even consider that he might have had backup right there?”

“No,” Machete-Man replies, sounding almost afraid. “We were–”

Machete-Man’s voice is cut off abruptly by a gunshot. There’s a weak, gargled choking noise and then a heavy thud to mark the collapsing of the body. Sylvain winces against her. _Two people dead_ , Ingrid thinks to herself hopelessly. 

“Does anyone else have anything stupid to tell me?” Miklan snarls, his voice growing louder, more incensed, and a bit closer to the toy store. Ingrid bites the inside of her cheek to stifle a whimper that nearly slips out. “I want you to sweep the mall. Find my brother and whoever is with him. Kill any of his friends, but bring Sylvain to me. I’ll kill him myself.”

Ingrid can’t breathe. She forces herself to let out a breath as Sylvain’s head lifts away from hers. His eyes are wide and panicked; he looks a thousand miles away. Ingrid lifts a trembling hand to his face. It has been almost a year since he has seen his brother, but even a year can’t erase all the abuse that Sylvain had suffered at Miklan’s hands. 

Ingrid needs him in the moment and she needs him to focus on getting them out of here, not on his memories. She can’t slap sense into him. She can’t pinch him because she’s not sure that he won’t yelp if she does. She can’t just sit here and let him dissociate either though. 

Admittedly, she doesn’t quite think through her next course of action. 

She grabs him by the face, yanks his head towards her, and just barely recognizes the flash of confusion in his eyes before she kisses him. Ingrid presses her lips to his before her brain can catch up with the rest of her body. She’s kissing Sylvain while hunched behind a toy store’s decrepit counter while hiding from his psychopathic brother who is now actively hunting them down after they had accidentally stumbled upon his operation while looking for supplies. 

Her mind spirals so far that she doesn’t realize Sylvain is kissing her back until she notices one of his hands is half-buried in her braid, keeping her pulled tightly against him as his lips part to match her.

Ingrid jerks back from him, nearly bashing her head against the counter as she gapes at him. Her face heats up across her cheeks into her ears and her mouth opens and closes twice in her frantic mortification.

Sylvain mouths her name in surprise. Ingrid shakes her head furiously. She mouths ‘sorry’ back to him. His brows furrow and the corner of his mouth ticks down in easily recognizable frustration. Ingrid tears her eyes off of Sylvain, listening for the Sons of Gautier again. The voices are even closer to them and Ingrid huddles further under the counter, pressing her shoulder against Sylvain’s. 

“My brother said he was here with Hunters, right?” Miklan’s voice asks, sounding almost right above him as the raiders sweep the toy store. “We can’t waste time combing all of these shops. Pick the ones that have supplies that might be useful to them and stick to those. Check the sporting goods and the camping supply store.”

Relief spreads through her so quickly she almost feels dizzy. The sound of footsteps searching the toy store fade until the crunch of glass by the storefront signifies a full retreat. Sylvain leans away from her, carefully peeking out the side of the counter and scanning the toy store. Ingrid’s heart hammers in her chest. She can only hope that they are alone now. 

Sylvain turns back to her. “Okay,” he whispers. “We need to get the fuck out of here. They’ll be combing the western side, so we should go east.”

Ingrid attempts to recall the layout of the mall. She had tried to memorize it from the map at the entrance when they had arrived. Sylvain’s escape route will take them across the largest parking lot. She pokes his forearm, her mind racing. 

“The cars in the parking lot, do you think you could get one started?”

He considers it for a moment and then nods. “Yes, probably. We should pick one as close to the exit as possible. That way there’s less between us and getting out of here.”

Ingrid frowns. “We have to cross that entire parking lot on foot.”

Sylvain sighs. “I guess we do. We’ll go slowly and quietly and just hope that they’re too busy on the other side to see us until it’s too late.”

He moves to stand up and Ingrid snatches his hand, pulling him back to her. “Hey,” she says, “are you okay?”

Sylvain smiles at her, but she sees his façade: it’s that same bravado that he was parading for the thugs in the department store. “I’m good. We need to go.”

She wants to call him out, but this is neither the time nor place for that, so she just nods and lets him pull her up. They move slowly and carefully through the destroyed toy store until they can look out into the mall gallery. There is only one thug standing outside the closest entrance to the department store and he’s holding a rifle. 

Sylvain taps her shoulder and points to a shard of broken, reflective glass at her feet. Ingrid nods and carefully picks it up. She creeps a few feet away from Sylvain and holds the glass out to catch a beam of light, tilting it towards the man. She watches as he waves a hand in front of his face, trying to block the reflected light, scowling when it doesn’t go away. Then, he seems to realize he’s being intentionally distracted. He raises his gun, slowly walking towards Ingrid’s hiding spot. 

Thankfully, he doesn’t call for backup as he walks towards her. She keeps flashing the glass to keep his attention fixed on her as she watches Sylvain’s shadow drift silently behind the man. When he is almost looming over her, Sylvain lunges forward, wrapping his arm around the man’s neck. His hand smothers the gunman’s mouth and they wrestle briefly. Sylvain grunts before there’s a sharp cracking noise and the other man goes limp in Sylvain’s grip. 

Sylvain eases the man to the ground as Ingrid swallows tersely. “Did you kill him?”

Sylvain’s expression is uneasy. His eyes dart across the man’s face and his mouth curls down. “I think I might have.”

Ingrid bites the inside of her cheek but forces herself not to dally on it. “Come on,” Ingrid says, nudging the rifle with her foot. “They took your gun so you might as well repay the favour, right?”

Sylvain takes a deep breath. “Right, yeah.” He picks up the gun and slings it over his back before patting the guy down and finding a few magazines to pocket. 

“Okay,” Ingrid says. She points to the bank across the gallery. “There’s a door on the far side there that should lead us out to the east parking lot if the map from earlier was correct.” 

Sylvain looks impressed for a second. “You memorized the map?” 

She shrugs. “I like escape plans.”

He chuckles faintly. “Alright. You run first and I’ll cover you.”

Ingrid nods, shifting her crouch so that she’s in a sprinter’s position. Sylvain nods to her and she pushes off, dashing across to the bank. She vaults over the low barricade blocking the door and draws her weapon, spinning to look back and see if anyone spotted her moving. She doesn’t see anyone so she waves to Sylvain, keeping an eye out as he hurries towards her. 

He hops the barricade and moves past her towards the doors behind her. Sylvain pushes the door open, Ingrid following behind, as they race across the bank to the exit. The rain they had predicted from earlier has started falling now and Ingrid bites her lip. If they can’t get a car here, they’re doubly fucked, but they don’t really have an option. 

“Hey, wait,” Sylvain says to her before they break from the cover provided by the bank. Ingrid blinks at him as he swaps their guns, taking the pistol from her and handing her his stolen rifle. “If I’m working on the car, you need something with better range. They might be up on the roof,” he explains. 

The gun feels heavy in her hands and she thinks about the man that she had killed back in the department store. She swallows, her throat burning, and nods. “Right.”

Her experience with rifles is minimal, but she does know how to load and fire it, so she isn’t completely a lost cause. Sylvain’s lips curl into a small smile and then he turns and points out a nearby red van. 

“We run for that one and then we keep moving, okay?”

Ingrid nods. “Got it.”

Before they can move, there’s a crunch of glass behind them. Ingrid spins immediately, her hands shaking on the rifle. Sylvain turns more slowly and Ingrid sees dread crawl across his expression as his shoulders tighten. Miklan and two of his thugs are standing in the entrance of the bank, staring at them. Miklan’s arms are crossed and he’s wearing a cruel smirk. 

“Hello Brother,” he snarls. “I hope you weren’t planning on leaving so soon.” Miklan’s eyes dart over Ingrid and she notes the glint of recognition in them. His head tilts to the side a bit as he looks back at Sylvain. “Where’s Fraldarius?” he asks. “I see you’ve got his girl here, so where is he?”

Sylvain nudges Ingrid partially behind him and one step out the door into the parking lot. “Miklan, I thought I was lucky enough that I’d never have to see you again.”

Miklan nods and the men flanking him lift their guns. “Oh come on, Little Brother, you can’t be serious. Just because the old man kicked me out of town, you thought you’d be rid of me?”

“Ingrid,” Sylvain whispers harshly. “We’re going to run now.”

Her eyes widen, but she doesn’t have time to react before Sylvain lifts her pistol and pulls the trigger. Miklan bellows in pain as Sylvain shoves her to the side and away from the spray of bullets that follows. He drags her into the parking lot, behind the closest vehicle: a black SUV. 

Ingrid takes a shaky breath and opens her mouth to say something. Sylvain shakes his head firmly, cutting her off, and then nudges her towards the next car in this row. Crouching low to the ground, they maneuver along, keeping a vehicle between them and where Sylvain’s brother is. 

“Come out, come out, Little Brother!” Miklan sings in a mocking snarl. Quieter, he issues orders to his companions that they can hear but not understand. Ingrid just focuses on keeping a car between her and Miklan as they slowly make their way across the parking lot. 

“If you’ve got Fraldarius’s girl, I’m willing to bet that he’s long dead, right? Maybe you killed him yourself to get your hands on her,” Miklan continues to yell. 

Sylvain scowls. “Keep moving,” he mutters. “He’s trying to bait us.”

Ingrid presses her lips together, but she keeps moving. There’s a sudden popping noise and then the screech of bullets into metal and glass as the thugs open fire into a few cars that are just behind them. She winces, but Sylvain’s firm hand on her back keeps her moving forward. They continue the slow, dangerous movements until they are almost at the edge of the parking lot. 

“That one,” Sylvain says quietly, pointing out a silver car to their right. “Tires look good. I’ll try to get it started.”

Ingrid nods and they creep towards it. Sylvain sighs, then carefully rises up enough to smash his elbow through the window. He drops back to cover with her after he does it, but there is no ensuing gunfire. Ingrid nods to him. 

“Start the car,” she urges. She tightens her grip on the rifle he had given her and turns her back on him, scanning the area. 

From here, she can see both of Miklan’s grunts scouring vehicles closer to the store, but she can’t see the eldest Gautier son himself. There’s a sparking noise behind her as the car’s engine sputters. 

“Okay, I’ve almost got it. Get in,” Sylvain urges. 

Ingrid nods and stands up. As soon as she does, a gun fires and blinding pain pierces her right leg. She swallows a scream and clamps her hand down on her leg as she breaks around the car to throw herself through the open passenger-side door. She slams the door and hunches down in the seat as more bullets ping the car. 

“Sylvain!” she screams. 

“Got it!” he cries and the engine rumbles to life. 

The tires screech as the car lurches forward. Ingrid’s hand jerks off the gun spread across her lap and slams against the dashboard to catch herself before she is thrown into it. Sylvain guns them out of the parking lot, away from the mall as Ingrid hunches further down in the seat. The left side mirror on the car shatters in a spray of glass. Sylvain jerks the wheel to the right, guiding them out of the path of a spray of bullets. He swears loudly, scowling and keeping his foot glued to the gas pedal. 

Ingrid manages a shaky grunt as she pushes herself to the back of her seat. Carefully, she releases the magazine on the rifle and drops it down to her feet. She steals a glance at her leg between her fingers. Her right thigh is drenched in blood. It’s hot and sticky against her palm and she clamps down, trying to keep pressure on it. 

She takes a quiet, shaky breath, but keeps her face clear so that she doesn’t alert Sylvain to anything. She straightens up in the seat and leans her head back against the headrest as the car rumbles along. 

“Nice driving,” she says to Sylvain, relief creeping through her voice as she watches the mall grow smaller in the side-view mirror. 

He laughs, sounding almost giddy. “God, I didn’t think that was actually going to work. We’re on the road and getting the fuck out of here.”

Ingrid hums in reply as the pain in her leg ratchets up a notch. She winces. She’s starting to feel a little dizzy. She closes her eyes and takes a few slow breaths. Her mouth goes dry, almost like she’s going to be sick. She’s pretty sure that Sylvain tries to ask her something, but she’s so tired and her ears are ringing, so she doesn’t give him a reply beyond a small pained grunt. 

“Ingrid?” Sylvain asks, louder. For some reason, his voice sounds a hundred miles away. “Ingrid!” 

Everything goes quiet. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> see you all on wednesday...


	4. act iv. dream

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A temporary home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> everyone say thank you to mish for making this chapter readable. there will be more thanks after saturday's update because oh my god she has absolutely saved my ass so many times.

Ingrid jolts awake when the car hits a bump. She half-sits up from where she was lying, throwing out a hand to brace herself from the sudden movement and catching the back of the passenger side seat. She feels dizzy and almost nauseous. When she tries to move, there’s an aching stab of pain that snaps up through her leg. She whimpers. 

The car lurches again. She looks over to see that Sylvain has thrown an arm out to brace himself on the passenger seat as he looks back at her, his expression worried. 

“Hey, you should stay down.” His gaze flickers to her leg and Ingrid slowly follows the motion. 

There’s a bandage wrapped tightly around her upper thigh, but it’s almost completely soaked through with dried blood. Ingrid’s throat burns as the memories of the parking lot spin back to the forefront of her mind. 

“Oh,” she mumbles. “I got shot.”

Sylvain looks away from her, focusing back on the road in front of them. She can see how his jaw sets as he tries to disguise his worry. “Yeah.” He sounds scared in a way that Ingrid hardly ever hears Sylvain sound. 

“Sylvain?”

“I did my best, Ingrid, but I’m not a medic,” he says quietly. “I don’t know–” His voice trails off, straining as he tries to keep it from cracking.

Ingrid pushes against the seat until she sits up with her back to the car door and her legs spread out across the seats. She doesn’t remember moving to the backseat. Sylvain must have done that himself once she had passed out next to him. She pokes at the edge of the bandage and winces at the sharp flinch of pain that radiates. 

“Sylvain,” she starts, keeping her voice even, but he shakes his head, glaring at her in the rearview mirror of the car. 

“I know what you’re going to say and you’re not allowed to say that,” Sylvain says fiercely. “You’re not allowed to tell me to leave you behind. I’m not doing that.”

Ingrid leans forward, ignoring the burst of heat in her leg until she can grab the back of the driver’s side seat. She smacks Sylvain’s shoulder– _hard_. “What happened to your survival instinct, Sylvain? You’re supposed to be a Hunter. If someone slows you down, you’re supposed to cut them off.” 

Sylvain shakes his shoulder out of her grip and the car jerks a bit at the motion. Ingrid slips back, wincing and returning her back to rest against the car door. Sylvain tilts his head back to look at her and it feels like his eyes are burning as he stares. 

“I’m not leaving you behind,” he says fiercely. “I made a promise. I’m going to get you to Garreg Mach.”

Ingrid is tired–her eyelids are heavy and her limbs feel sluggish. She knows that it’s probably from a combination of blood loss and shock. “I made a promise too.”

“Then we’ll keep our promises together, okay?” Sylvain says. “Nobody is getting left behind. End of discussion.”

Ingrid bites the inside of her cheek. “What are we going to do when we run out of gas?”

“We’ll figure that out when it happens,” Sylvain says shortly. His tone is clipped but doesn’t sound angry, just stressed. “Go back to sleep, Ing, we’ll be alright.”

He’s lying to her, she’s confident in that, but the sure tone of his voice gives her enough to hold onto. Ingrid rests her head back against the window and lets the gentle rumble of the car lull her back into sleep, even through the pain radiating in her leg. 

* * *

The next time Ingrid wakes up, she is lying in a real bed wearing completely different clothes than what she had been wearing in the car. She jerks, yanking on her arms, only to notice that her right hand is handcuffed to the frame of the bed. Ingrid shifts, pushing through a twinge of pain, to look down at her leg. 

“Oh fuck,” she mutters, staring at her it. It’s wrapped in clean, sterile bandages and it looks like a real medic has tended to it. 

It still hurts like a bitch, but it’s definitely better than it had been when she had been in the car with Sylvain. She shifts again, adjusting her shoulder and pulling at the handcuffs holding her to the bed as she looks around more, trying to orient herself. She’s alone in the room. The only furnishings are the bed and a small table to her right. On top of the table is a surgical tray with a few medical tools, seemingly supporting her suspicion that a trained medic has examined her.

Ingrid turns her attention to the handcuffs and reaches back into her hair, pulling out a bobby pin. Back in Fhirdiad, Felix had taught her how to do this, but she has only done it once in practice. She carefully bends the pin, widening the gap, and slides it into the locking mechanism on the cuffs. She pushes on the pins of the lock slowly, listening carefully to the clicking. When she feels like she’s holding all the tumblers, she slowly turns the hairpin, rotating the mechanism inside the lock. 

Her hand slips and the tumblers click back into place. Ingrid frowns and withdraws the pin, sighing. She was close, so she tries again. She slips sooner this time and has to reset for a second time. 

“Come on, come on,” she mutters as she slowly rotates her wrist, trying to keep her hand from shaking. 

The lock clicks and the cuff on her wrist loosens. Ingrid quickly withdraws the pin, shoving it back into her hair as she flicks the now-open cuff off of her wrist. She rubs her wrist and sits up. Her leg aches, but she swings it off the bed anyway. She rests a hand on the bed frame as she pushes herself up. Her leg almost gives out immediately and she barely catches herself before she can collapse. 

Ingrid inhales sharply through her nose and tests her leg again. It absolutely _burns_ when she rests weight on it, but she doesn’t have much of a choice. She hobbles, trying to be quiet, to the small table and examines the surgical tools. They all look sterile and well-taken care of. Ingrid picks up a scalpel, pressing it flat against her palm. 

As she picks it up, she hears faint voices from outside of the room. Ingrid freezes and looks back over at the bed. She hops over awkwardly and jerks the top sheet off of the bed. She may not have the brute strength that Sylvain has, but if she gives herself leverage, she can take someone down like this. This is one of the moves Sylvain had taught her back in Fhirdiad. 

Ingrid bites the inside of her cheek as she stumbles towards the door, flattening herself against the wall. She pulls the sheet taut between her hands as she waits. She shifts her grip on the scalpel, pinching it between her ring and middle fingers to keep a good grip on both it and the sheet. The scalpel is the backup plan. 

Now that she’s closer to the door, she notices when the voices get louder and closer. It sounds like one man and one woman, but Ingrid can just barely pick up on a third set of footsteps. She rests her weight fully on her left leg as she waits for the door to open. 

The moment the door swings inward, Ingrid lunges, wrapping the sheet around the neck of the man that steps into the room. She tightens her grip, spinning and yanking the sheet to pull him into a headlock. Her leg nearly gives out from the motion, but she manages to kick at the man’s legs to knock him to his knees. 

He chokes against the force of the hold she applies, but Ingrid doesn’t have the mobility to avoid his hand when he reaches for her leg, pushing his hand into her bandage. Ingrid cries out and her leg buckles, sending her crashing to the ground. The man tears the sheet and wrestles it from her hands, rolling her onto her back and pinning her down easily, one hand on her shoulder and his legs pinning her shins down. Ingrid adjusts her grip on the scalpel, but her motion is telling enough that he grabs her wrist before she can stab him and forces it down to the floor. 

“Woah!” a woman exclaims from the door as she steps around him, into the room. “I thought we cuffed her to the bed.”

The man grins. “We did. I guess she’s just crafty enough to have worked herself out of that situation.”

Ingrid stays silent. The man has tanned skin, wild, dark hair, and mischievous green eyes. He pries her fingers open and removes the scalpel from her grip, passing it up to the woman behind him. Ingrid scowls as she takes the tool, dangling it between her thumb and index finger. The woman frowns in distaste as she drops it to the tray on the table. 

“Are you going to try to strangle me again if I let you go?” the man asks. 

Ingrid remains silent, pressing her lips together. 

“We came here to check on your leg,” the woman offers. “If we had wanted to hurt you, we wouldn’t have treated you.”

“Why was I restrained then?” Ingrid asks sharply. 

The man grins. “We didn’t know who you were and your friend hasn’t exactly been forthcoming with any information. So, with that said, if I let you up so that Marianne can check your leg, will you try to strangle me again?”

Ingrid looks past the pink-haired woman and the man to the third person: a young woman with pale blue hair. She seems very timid. Ingrid would love to be able to trust these people, but her mind spins even just thinking about the bandits back at the mall. 

“Where’s my friend?” she demands. 

“The redhead?” the pink-haired woman asks. “Oh, he’s–”

“–Safe, but none of your concern at the moment,” the man cuts in coolly. 

Ingrid narrows her eyes. She already doesn’t like this man. With his silver tongue, he reminds her too much of all the secretive, manipulative parts of Sylvain that she dislikes. She bumps their knees together and jerks her arms at the same time, unbalancing him to roll him onto his back. The movement triggers a sharp pain in her leg. Ingrid nearly collapses from it. 

The man raises an eyebrow from underneath her, but he makes no attempt to struggle out from beneath her, even though she’s sure that he could quite easily do so. 

“Nice move,” he compliments. His smile doesn’t waver. “Your friend is safe. We just separated you because we had to be sure you didn’t mean us any harm.”

Ingrid frowns. “Who are you?”

“If you get off of me, we can do introductions for real,” he suggests. 

Ingrid stands up awkwardly, favouring her bad leg as best as she can, but it still screams in pain as she shifts onto her feet. The man stands up, brushing off his clothes. He looks past her to the bed and the now-empty handcuffs. 

“How’d you get out of those, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“Picked the lock,” she replies shortly, decidedly leaving out the part about her hairpin. Ingrid looks around at the people surrounding her. “Who are you people?”

“I’m Claude,” the man says. “Claude von Riegan.”

“Hilda,” the pink-haired woman introduces herself with a slightly mocking curtsy. She waves to the shy woman behind her. “And this is Marianne, the one who looked after your leg.”

“Speaking of the leg,” Claude interrupts, “you shouldn’t be standing on it.” He gestures to the bed. “If you want to sit so that Marianne can look at it, we can answer your questions.”

Ingrid sighs, still feeling suspicious, but she hops over to the bed, dropping onto it before reaching down to drag her leg up onto the bed. She winces with the motion and Marianne steps around Claude and Hilda to kneel in front of the bed. Ingrid watches as Marianne carefully pulls on a pair of latex gloves and then reaches out to undo the wrapping around her leg. 

Ingrid tries to relax her leg, leaning against the headboard as Marianne works. The woman carefully unwraps the wound until it’s open to the air. Ingrid stares at the red, puffy skin along the side of her thigh. There are a few stitches sewn into the skin and there are raised ridges around it, creating what will be a permanent scar. The pants that they’ve given her have a hole cut into them over her injury to expose the skin. 

Marianne carefully dabs around the edges of the wound, ensuring that it is clean. Ingrid doesn’t see any visible signs of infection, so she says nothing as the blue-haired woman cups behind Ingrid’s knee and lifts carefully, replacing the wrapping with clean cloth. As Marianne starts to wind it back around Ingrid’s leg, Ingrid looks at Claude and Hilda, both of whom are watching the process. 

“Where is my friend?” she asks again. 

“He’s just down the hall,” Claude answers immediately this time. Ingrid breathes a deep sigh of relief. “We split you up because we didn’t know if either or both of you were dangerous so we had you split up and restrained for our safety.”

Ingrid presses her lips together and nods slowly. She can respect the need to understand if a person is friend or foe before trusting them. She looks around the small room, but there is no window to give her an indication of what kind of building she is in. 

“Where are we?” 

“Small settlement at the northern edge of the Oghma Mountains. We’ve been here for a few years and we’ve been mostly unbothered by raiders and Infected. It’s been a good place for us,” Claude explained. “This is an old military complex. We took it over and turned it into a home. We call it Failnaught.”

“Failnaught?” Ingrid repeats, the word sounding strange on her tongue. “Where did that come from?”

Claude and Hilda exchange a glance. “Failnaught was the name of an old historical relic passed down in my family. My family’s been a bit all over the place with our Community living, but the relic is something that’s been constant to us. So naturally, when we established our own place, it seemed like a fitting name.”

Marianne ties off the bandage wrapped around Ingrid’s leg and Ingrid immediately pulls out of the woman’s touch, swinging her legs off the bed. She moves to stand up, but Claude and Hilda both immediately hold up their hands, corralling her back onto the bed. 

“Woah,” Claude says, “you have a healing gunshot wound on your leg. Where are you going?”

“I want to see my friend,” Ingrid says. “He’s probably worried.”

Hilda’s eyes soften. “We’ve been keeping him updated on your progress so he knows that you’re alive and doing well.”

Ingrid frowns. “Can I see him?”

“You shouldn’t be walking yet.” There’s a slight hesitation to his words which Ingrid recognizes as one of Sylvain’s tells when he lies too. Claude’s tell is more subtle, indicating a half-truth over a full lie. 

“Then bring him here,” she says coolly. 

He laughs dryly and nods. “You’re smarter than you look.”

She scowls. “Because I’m blonde?”

“Because you look Community-bred and we haven’t exactly met the brightest bulbs from the Community so far,” Claude rebuffs easily. “Look, your friend hasn’t even given us a name. We have no way to know why you guys are together or what your intentions are.”

Ingrid huffs. “We’re trying to get to Garreg Mach,” she says. 

“You got shot. That indicates some kind of past animosity. Plus, we found a rifle in the car with forensic ballistics that tied it to the same type of bullet in your leg. 

Ingrid scowls. “Sylvain,” she snaps his name, “is one of my closest friends and longest companions. Our Community was destroyed and we’re trying to get to Garreg Mach to meet up with other survivors that left.”

Recognition dawns on Claude’s expression. “Fhirdiad. You’re both from the Fhirdiad Community.”

Ingrid’s lips part in surprise. “You know about our Community.” It takes her a second to put the pieces together. “Oh my god. You’ve seen the others. They came through here.”

Claude nods slowly and looks at Hilda. “It was about two weeks ago. They only stopped for the night, but they had a bus and probably thirty survivors heading to Garreg Mach.”

Ingrid covers her mouth and takes a shaky breath. There is a chance that Dimitri and Felix and some of the others that they had escaped with are still alive. She straightens up again and stares Claude down. 

“Look, you’ve got our background. We’re not a threat. Please let me see him,” Ingrid says desperately. She’s not quite reduced to begging, but she can’t say that her resolve will last much longer. 

Claude nods to her, his eyes softening. He unclips a radio from his belt and raises it up. “Hey, Raph, can you bring the guy over here? She’s awake and I think they can be trusted to see each other.”

Marianne stands up off the bed and Hilda reaches for her hand. The two women step back and head towards the entrance of the room. Ingrid stays on the bed, watching as Claude moves back, leaning against the table, still studying her. His gaze makes her strangely uncomfortable.

“If you feel any heat around the wound, please let us know,” Marianne says. “It’s a sign of infection and I’ve just spent eight days trying to make sure that you didn’t get a serious blood infection so I would hate for my work to be undone.”

Marianne’s well-intentioned words are a slap in the face. “Eight days?” she asks faintly, feeling dizzy. 

Hilda and Marianne slip out of the room without another word and Ingrid’s head snaps to Claude. He has lifted a hand to press his fist against his mouth as he stares at her. His gaze is cataloguing her. It’s incredibly unsettling. 

“What do you mean _eight days_?” Ingrid demands. 

Claude sighs. “We kept you sedated for a few days to help fight infection. Your body needed as much energy as it could muster and Marianne, who is a trained medic, recommended that course of action to help your body heal as best as it could. We weaned you off the drugs last night because your recovery was stabilizing.”

Ingrid feels ill. “Sylvain hasn’t seen me since you found us,” she realizes. 

She’s about to make a remark about how worried he must be, when the door to the room opens again and a hulking blond man steps in, escorting Sylvain. Sylvain looks frazzled and tired–there are dark circles around his eyes and his hair is a completely ruffled mess–but he appears completely unharmed. As soon as he’s in the room, he breaks towards her. She surges up, almost falling off the bed as her shaking hands grab at the fabric of his shirt. He kneels on the ground in front of the bed and reaches out a hand to her, touching her face lightly. 

“Oh my god, you’re okay,” he breathes. Something in his voice makes her stomach stir and her hands tremble in her lap. 

Ingrid gives him a wavering smile. She lifts her arms and wraps them around his neck, yanking him into a furious hug. Sylvain hugs her back just as fiercely, stroking over her hair like he can’t believe she’s here. He pulls back after a second and kisses her forehead. Ingrid’s eyes flutter closed and she squeezes his shoulder, relief coiling through her whole body. She can’t imagine what he has been thinking since they arrived here when he hasn’t been allowed to see her. 

“I know they told me you were alive, but I had no way of knowing. I needed you to be alive, Ingrid,” he murmurs.

She touches the side of his face and then rests her forehead against his. “I’m okay, but, Sylvain, are you okay?”

He nods against her, moving both of their heads and laughs breathily. “I’m fine. I’ve been fine. Fed, clean, warm, and safe. I’m fine, Ingrid. I was just worried about you.”

“Okay,” she says. She looks past Sylvain to where Claude is watching their reunion and draws back out of Sylvain’s touch. “Claude,” she says, addressing him directly, “how did we get here?”

Sylvain’s hand rests on her left knee as he looks over his shoulder at the man in question. “Ran out of gas,” Sylvain offers. “I pulled over on the side of the road and tried everything to get the car started again, but nothing worked.”

“He got spotted by a patrol we had scouting the area. We brought you both here after that. Marianne treated you and put you under and we,” Claude pauses, smiling apologetically at Sylvain, “split you up until we could get the whole story.”

Sylvain’s eyebrows furrow so Ingrid taps his hand over her leg. “Okay,” she says, mediating before Sylvain says anything damning. “You have the whole story. Can we go now?”

Claude stares at them. “What?” he asks in disbelief. 

Ingrid frowns. “That group that came through. They’re our friends. We have to catch up to them and meet them at Garreg Mach. We need to leave.”

Claude laughs. “It’s going to be winter soon and you want to trek into a mountainous region with only the stuff you were carrying when we found you.” He shakes his head. “Look, that sounds like a death sentence to me. If you’re smart, you’ll rethink that and maybe consider the generous offer I am about to extend.”

Sylvain stands up from his crouch, sitting down on the bed next to Ingrid and staring down Claude. “What offer?”

“Join Failnaught. If the two of you made it as far as you did from Fhirdiad by yourselves, that tells me you have the survival skills required to make you assets to us. Plus, you have experience living in a large Community.”

Ingrid frowns. “I don’t know anything about your group. You can’t expect me to have an answer to that question right now.” She picks at the edge of her bandage, avoiding the fact that while she might be able to be considered an “asset” while at her full capabilities, she currently has a bullet wound that is seriously slowing her down.

Claude seems to catch her hesitance. “It’s understandable if you’re feeling uncertain about this place or other things.” He pauses, his gaze glossing over Ingrid’s leg which tells her that he is both observant and insightful. Claude approaches the room’s door, opening it. He grabs something just outside Ingrid’s line of sight and drags it into the room. “I’ve been working on multiple parts of that situation.” 

Ingrid stares at the wheelchair: a rickety thing that looks like it might break if it goes over a bump too hard. But, it’s a wheelchair that she needs since she sure as hell can’t walk without fucking up her leg further. Claude smiles at her in a way that’s placating, but not insulting. Ingrid presses her lips together. 

“Would you like to see Failnaught?” Claude asks. 

Sylvain stands up, reaching out to grab the handles on the back of the wheelchair. Claude releases the chair and Sylvain pulls it a half-step closer to the bed. Sylvain’s head tilts as he gives her a faint smile. Ingrid sighs and nods. 

Sylvain positions the chair so its back is pressed against the edge of the bed and wedges his foot under the wheel before reaching out to offer her his hand. Ingrid takes the offered support and grits her teeth as she shifts into the chair, bracing her weight against Sylvain’s forearm. He helps her into the chair, kicking down the footrests for her, while Ingrid takes a few deep breaths as she gets settled. The movement jostles her already sore leg and it takes a minute for the pain to slowly fade. 

Sylvain pulls the wheelchair away from the bed, stepping behind her to hold the handles. The rubber of the wheels squeaks on the floor is jarring–the sound makes her flinch more than she would care to admit. Claude nods and leads them out of the room. Sylvain starts pushing her after Claude but leans down, his breath falling on her ear. 

“I don’t trust him, Ingrid.”

She tilts her head back, almost bashing against his nose as he withdraws. “They thought you shot me, you know,” she grumbles. 

“I’m aware. I thought that not fighting it would help them see that I didn’t.”

Ingrid reaches back, twisting her shoulder to grab at where his hands are curled around the wheelchair’s handles, and pinches him sharply. “Idiot. You should have just told them a truncated truth.”

Before Sylvain can reply, Claude turns to look back at them, raising an eyebrow. “Everything alright?”

“Yes,” Ingrid lies, straightening up and dropping her hands back to her lap. 

Sylvain picks up on her cue and pushes forward again, catching up to Claude. They walk quietly through the halls of the complex. There are no windows inside the building, but it also doesn’t give off a feeling of being underground, like she might have expected. With the industrial-looking walls and floor, she does believe Claude’s previous explanation that the place was an old military base. 

The wheelchair rolls along–the squeaking wheels the only sound between them–until they reach a heavy set of doors. The blonde man–Ingrid assumes this is Raph, the man who had escorted Sylvain to her–is standing guard inside of them. He pushes open the door when he sees them, a cheery, wide grin on his face as he greets Claude. She blinks as they move outside, her eyes adjusting to the brightness of the natural light.

When her vision clears, Ingrid sees that they’re in the centre pavilion of what looks like a u-shaped building. About fifteen people are milling around, some armed and some unarmed, but all of them look more relaxed than any survivor Ingrid has ever seen. 

Claude waves a hand around in a circle and flashes them both a charming smile. “Welcome to Failnaught.”

Ingrid chuckles as she looks around, shaking her head. There’s what looks like a working garden along the far left side of the compound, which looks better tended to than the one back in Fhirdiad had. She looks at Claude. 

“How long have you guys been here?”

He shrugs. “Not long. But, we have a good way of doing things.” He points up at the roof of the u-shaped building on the right side. “There’s a guard spot up there that we use to keep watch. There’s a shooting range and a sparring ground just into the woods out there. We have enough forest for hunting and there’s a river we can go fishing in.”

Ingrid twists in the chair and looks up at Sylvain. “It’s impressive,” she concedes. 

Sylvain looks less impressed, but he had probably seen all of this when they had been brought here in the first place. He nods to her. “It looks like a home.”

Claude smiles. “Well, thank you. And, if you’re not feeling particularly suicidal, maybe you’ll make it your home too.” He strides forward, starting across the courtyard. “Come on. Let’s walk and talk.” He says ‘walk’ a bit ironically and Ingrid rolls her eyes, but she braces herself in the wheelchair as Sylvain pushes it across the bumpy ground, following Claude. 

“So,” Claude continues as they skirt the edge of the pavilion, away from most of the clustered people. “The gunshot. Who wants to explain that one?”

Ingrid sighs. “Sylvain didn’t shoot me and I didn’t shoot myself either.”

“Then who did?” Claude asks. “I want to offer you a place here. You both seem like decent people, but I need to know.”

“Someone that doesn’t matter now,” Sylvain says sharply and Ingrid can hear the hurt in his voice. 

She swallows hard. She still needs to talk to Sylvain about what happened in the mall with his brother. Miklan is not only alive but running a seemingly successful raider group. Also, he now knows that Sylvain is alive and the direction they had taken off in. The added aggravating factor that Sylvain’s brother had shot her on top of all of that also doesn’t help. Ingrid knows Sylvain cannot feel good about that. 

“Sylvain,” she says quietly. 

He shakes his head and Claude looks between them, his eyebrows furrowing. “Does it,” he starts casually, “have anything to do with the raider group that trashed your car two days after we brought you here?”

Ingrid’s blood runs cold. She closes and opens her hands over her legs, her palms suddenly clammy. “What?”

“A group of thugs found the car on the side of the road and completely stripped it. Thankfully we’d taken all of your stuff, and led you guys back here, already by the time it happened, but they didn’t look pleased.” 

Claude’s eyes drift to Sylvain and Ingrid internally curses the strength of the Gautier genes and how similar Sylvain and his brother had once looked. The resemblance isn’t that strong now, but their red hair is still striking and hard to miss. 

“He’s my brother,” Sylvain says stiffly. “Before you ask.”

Claude raises an eyebrow like he is surprised that Sylvain had readily admitted to the relation. “Right. Well, our scouts haven’t seen them around since they stripped the car. We think they turned back to wherever they were coming from.” He looks between Ingrid and Sylvain again. “I won’t ask about the history of the relationship there; I just need to know if you think that he’ll be a problem for my people.”

Ingrid twists her neck, looking up at Sylvain. He looks conflicted, but he shakes his head after a moment. 

“My brother has never been stupid. He wouldn’t waste resources chasing me down if he thought I was long gone. Besides, like you said, it’s been eight days since we arrived here. If he was coming, the chances are that he would have been here by now.”

Claude nods. “Good. That’s reassuring.” He looks at Ingrid’s leg. “I know you’ve said that you need to get to Garreg Mach, but you shouldn’t be going anywhere while you’re still healing. Give the leg at least another week and see what you think of this place. It might surprise you.”

Claude steps away from both of them, giving them another charismatic grin that makes Ingrid feel a bit uneasy. A man who can turn on the charm as quickly as Claude can should probably not be trusted in this world. But, the people of Failnaught seem to trust him and they had helped Ingrid when she was in need. If his offer to stay at Failnaught, whether temporarily or permanently, is genuine, it might be worth considering, but not without first consulting the needling doubt she feels when she looks at him. 

“Thank you, Claude,” she says before he can walk away. “You didn’t have to help us.”

He laughs. “Come on, we’re all human, right? One person to another, it’s all about surviving. How can we live with ourselves if we don’t help?”

* * *

They stay for a week mostly because Ingrid literally can’t leave even if they wanted to. She can barely walk as it stands. Sylvain knows that it would be monumentally stupid of them to force her to walk and risk her leg getting more inflamed or infected. He can tell how annoyed it makes her, but there is nothing she can do about the situation except stay put and let her leg heal. Ingrid sticks to the wheelchair for a couple more days before the medic, a sweet woman named Marianne, tells her she might be okay to start limping around on crutches. 

Now that he’s been reunited with Ingrid and knows she’s alright, he feels better about letting her out of his sight. Sylvain makes himself busy around Failnaught, offering his help where it’s needed. He goes on a couple of patrols with a woman named Leonie and the burly blonde man, Raphael. They’re more than competent, tough as nails, and surprisingly nice. Raphael is a refreshingly lighthearted guy and Leonie is no-nonsense, but she’s also a brilliant hunter and an excellent shot. 

She manages to teach him a few things about improving his aim and Sylvain finds himself, for the most part, enjoying the company of the people of Failnaught. Ignatz, another one of the residents, is gentle-spirited. He does a drawing of Sylvain and Ingrid together that Sylvain folds up and tucks safely into the inside pocket of his bag for safekeeping. Marianne, of course, is wonderful and sweet as well. 

It’s mostly just Lorenz, Hilda, and Claude, that rub him the wrong way. Lorenz is a bit of a snob. He looks down on Sylvain and Ingrid since they aren’t originally from Failnaught and he has no shame in letting his suspicions be heard. Leonie tries to mediate that ground, but Sylvain solves the problem by mostly just ignoring Lorenz and staying as far away from him as possible. 

Hilda is her own kind of annoying. Sylvain doesn’t really see her doing that much physical work and having grown up in a Community where everyone contributes equally, Sylvain finds himself easily aggravated by her. He corners her in one of the old bunker’s meeting rooms one afternoon as she’s looking over a few maps of the surrounding area, knocking on the doorframe. 

“I’m not disturbing you, am I?” he asks, stepping into the room. 

Hilda rolls her eyes and straightens her maps. “You here to pester me, City Boy?”

That is the other annoying thing. She has taken to calling him ‘City Boy’ despite his protests. Sylvain gives her a deadpan look and walks over, staring at the maps in front of her. 

“What do you even do around here, if you don’t mind me asking?” he asks dryly. 

Hilda gives him an unamused look. “Claude may be the brains behind this place, but I’m the organization. I schedule, delegate, assign, and control. I know the comings and goings of almost every person in this place.”

Sylvain narrows his eyes as he studies her. Hilda is short, but her muscular stature isn’t well-hidden, despite her petite form. “Why aren’t you out there hunting and patrolling like the rest of them?”

Hilda shakes her head, a smirk curling up on her face. “Oh, that’s because I’m a delicate flower, you know.” She looks him up and down quickly. “And, since I know you’re not a complete buffoon, I’ll cut the bullshit. I keep Claude’s secrets and he lets me stay back and out of danger in return,” she explains. 

Sylvain frowns immediately. “Claude’s secrets?”

Hilda waves him off. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nothing that would put your precious Ingrid in danger. They’re just having a bit of fun. They’re quite like-minded, wouldn’t you agree?”

Sylvain’s frown deepens. Ingrid has been spending quite a bit of time with Claude since they’ve been staying here, but that’s mostly because Claude hangs around inside the barricades of the base and Ingrid says she wants to know how he really had put all of this stuff together as well as how he keeps it running so efficiently. 

He fixates on something else Hilda had said. “What do you mean by ‘your precious Ingrid’?” he asks. 

She raises an eyebrow and puts a hand on her hip. “You’re joking, right? You two are a thing, aren’t you?”

Sylvain’s mouth drops open. “What? No! Of course we’re not.”

Hilda’s eyes widen and she turns away, immediately busying herself with reshuffling maps. “Oops. That’s awkward. You know, I could have sworn that you were. The whole room-sharing, ride-or-die vibe the two of you have going. Could have fooled anyone, really.”

Sylvain shakes his head. “Absolutely not. Ingrid and I have been friends since we were infants and,” he cuts himself off, his throat tightening. “Her boyfriend of over three years was killed when our Community fell.”

Hilda’s teasing expression drops into something more serious. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.” She takes a short breath. “I don’t suppose he was lucky enough to catch a stray bullet, was he?”

Sylvain closes his eyes. “He shot himself,” he admits. “Got bit, but didn’t want to turn. The last thing he asked me to do was make sure that she got to Garreg Mach safely.”

“Ouch,” Hilda says. “Must be a hard promise to live up to, what with you being in love with her and all.”

Sylvain’s eyes snap open and he stares at the tiny pink-haired woman in utter disbelief. “I’m not in love with Ingrid!”

She presses her lips together and tilts her head, trying and failing to hide a smirk. “You can’t even convince yourself of that and you’re going to try to convince me? If I had to guess, you’ve always been in love with her and now everything is just a mess because you two are here and the boyfriend is,” she pauses, waving a hand towards the ceiling, “there.”

Sylvain rubs a hand over his face and sighs deeply. “I’m not in love with Ingrid,” he says again. “I might have had a thing for her a few years back, but then Glenn got there first and I backed off. There’s never been anything between us.”

Hilda pats his arm, smiling condescendingly. “Oh, honey, you’re so in love with her that it’s painted all over your face. The way you acted when you guys first arrived here was enough to tell me that. No friend would dislocate his own arm, punch out two guards and attempt to strangle someone just because they aren’t allowed to see their _friend_ .” 

Sylvain frowns. “Look, she’s my best friend and the last I saw her, she was dying. You didn’t let me see her for _eight days_. I think my reaction was warranted.” 

“Right.” Hilda’s smile tightens and her nails click over the tabletop. “Well, if you’re looking for her, she and Claude should be on the north-east side, probably doing a sweep.”

His brow furrows. “Why north-east? Isn’t the ground there uneven? That can’t be easy on the crutches.”

Hilda snaps her fingers under his nose. “You’re jealous that she’s been spending more time with Claude than she has with you since you guys have been here.”

Sylvain huffs out a breath. “This conversation is over,” he grumbles. 

Hilda giggles. “Aw, but aren’t I just the most pleasant company?” Sylvain starts to walk out of the room and Hilda calls after him: “Don’t worry about Claude’s secrets. They’re not harmful to anyone. They're just secret because he likes to have that silly air of mysteriousness about him.” He peeks back at her and she smirks. “Makes him hotter if you ask me.”

He scowls. “I didn’t ask.”

Sure enough, Sylvain finds Claude and Ingrid taking a leisurely stroll around the outside of the northeast building. Claude is walking backwards in front of Ingrid, a casual grin on his face that makes Sylvain irritatingly mad. Ingrid is limping along on crutches, smiling at something that Claude had said to her. That makes him feel worse, for some reason. 

He approaches them, making sure to be loud enough that he doesn’t startle them. Claude spots him first, his smile widening as he nods to Sylvain in greeting. Ingrid pauses, settling her crutches at a steady point on the ground before she twists and looks back at him, giving him a faint smile. 

“Hey,” he greets as he walks up.

“Hey yourself,” Ingrid replies. “How was hunting today?”

“Pretty good. Leonie and Ignatz went to catalogue what we caught back in the main building. Hilda told me I could find you guys out here.”

“Yeah,” Claude says. “We were practicing her stability on rocky ground. I think she’s getting the hang of it.”

Ingrid scoffs. “God, I would have been on my ass so many times if it wasn’t for you.”

Claude chuckles. “Nah, I think you’re fine.”

Sylvain’s half-tempted to make some _other_ comment about her ass, but the rampaging, childish jealousy in his chest makes him stifle the urge. The easy banter between Claude and Ingrid makes it seem like they’ve known each other for years even if they’ve only been here for just over two weeks and Ingrid had spent the first eight days unconscious. For Sylvain, who had endured years of scolding and exasperation from Ingrid, he’s jealous at how easily she seems to take to Claude.

Ingrid turns her attention back to Sylvain. “Were you looking for us for a particular reason?” Her green eyes are bright and happy. She looks relaxed–more at ease than Sylvain has seen her in the month since the Fhirdiad Community fell. 

He shrugs, feeling awkward. “Not particularly, I just wanted to see how you were doing.”

Claude looks like he is about to say something when they hear a shout from Raphael. The three of them look over and see Raphael waving at them from the main gate of Failnaught. Claude sighs and shakes his head. 

“I’ll go see what Raph needs, don’t worry. I’ll see you guys back on the other side of the wall.”

Claude jogs away and Sylvain waits until he’s out of earshot to open his mouth, but Ingrid beats him to the punch. 

“I know you don’t trust him,” she says. “I don’t know if I do either, but he has helped us, Sylvain. I probably would have died without Marianne and we don’t know that Miklan wouldn’t have caught up with us if they hadn’t brought us back here away from the car.”

Sylvain sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “No, I know, I just can’t help it. He reminds me of someone and I just can’t put my finger on it. It kinda ticks me off.”

Ingrid snorts.

He frowns. “What?”

She raises an eyebrow. “You're kidding, right?”

“No?”

Ingrid takes one hand off her crutches to pat his arm. “Sylvain, he reminds you of yourself.”

He stares at her. “What? No.”

She looks amused. “Alright, whatever helps you sleep at night.”

“You do,” he replies instinctively. 

Ingrid blinks, looking a bit taken aback and he backpedals quickly as his neck heats up with a blush. 

“Knowing that you’re safe and we’re not being kept apart by people we don’t know,” he corrects himself hastily. “Not, uh, anything else.”

His hand twitches towards her. Since the mall, it’s like everything in their relationship has been thrown completely on its head. Ingrid had kissed him. She hasn’t said a word about it and, honestly, Sylvain is still mostly just hoping that he hadn’t imagined it. His stomach flips every time he thinks about it. Hilda’s teasing prods really haven’t helped him feel better about the whole situation, whether they are true or not. 

Ingrid’s lips twitch into a tiny smile and she studies his face. “Yeah, right.” She pauses. “Hey, are you okay? You look tired.”

Sylvain doesn’t mention the nightmare he’d had last night where she had been the one caught by the Sons of Gautier in the department store. He doesn’t mention the other vision he’d had where she had missed her shot and they were both killed back in the mall. He doesn’t want to relive the sick feeling of victory that had coiled in his stomach when he snapped the man’s neck outside the toy store. 

He smiles at Ingrid, hoping that he looks calm enough to be convincing. “I’m fine. Must have just kicked the wall or something.”

Her lips part and he recognizes quickly that she doesn’t believe him, but before she can call him out, Claude is yelling both of their names and jogging back towards them. His face is twisted into a tense frown and his shoulders are stiff–a far cry from the relaxed, calm look he had worn before. Sylvain’s stomach sinks. 

“The raiders are back, aren’t they?” he asks before Claude can speak. 

Claude’s expression is tight. “Yes. Our scouts spotted them back by the road.” He shakes his head. “They brought three times as many people this time. They outnumber us two-to-one. Three-to-one if we’re counting real fighters.”

Sylvain rubs his face, worry settling in his stomach. “If they find this place, it won’t be about Ingrid or I anymore,” he confesses. 

Claude nods. “I know.” He looks between Ingrid and Sylvain. “I won’t throw you to the wolves.”

Ingrid frowns. “Claude, you can’t seriously intend to put the lives of all of your people at risk.”

He crosses his arms. “If I turn you away, I’m sending you to your deaths. We have a plan. It’s probably more than a little stupid, but we have a plan.” He steps away from them, back towards the centre of Failnaught. Then, he looks over his shoulder. “Look, they’re raiders, right? If they’re already in the area they’re bound to see our traps and such. They’ll come looking for us whether or not they find you two.”

Sylvain knows that Claude is right, even if he wishes that he could solve the whole problem by just marching himself out to face his brother alone. It’s a stupid, suicidal idea, especially since Miklan is Miklan. His brother would not hesitate to make the confrontation as painful as possible for Sylvain. It means that he would go after Ingrid. Sylvain will not let his brother anywhere near her again.

He kicks aside a rock, creating a smoother path, and motions for Ingrid to follow Claude. Ingrid frowns at him, her green eyes narrowed, but she does hobble forward on her crutches. Sylvain slows his stride and trails a half-step behind them, listening as Ingrid starts talking. 

“So what’s this stupid plan of yours?” Ingrid asks Claude as they round the edge of the wall back into the central part of Failnaught. 

Claude points to an area in the corner where they see Leonie and Lorenz mounted up on horses. Sylvain stares at the horses in surprise. He had been told that Failnaught has horses, but he has not actually seen them. Ingrid, however, had actually been learning to sit atop the horses with Marianne and Leonie. 

“The horses? How is this a plan?” Sylvain asks, looking at Claude. 

Leonie and Lorenz start over towards them. They pause when they’re almost on top of Claude, Ingrid and Sylvain. 

“You’re sure they’re below the eastern ridge?” Leonie asks Claude. 

Claude nods. “Ignatz confirmed their position this morning. If you make enough noise they should follow you back here, but make sure to stay ahead of them.”

Lorenz rolls his eyes. “We’ve done this before, Claude.”

“No,” Claude counters, “you’ve led them away. That’s different from leading them back here.”

Leonie and Lorenz nod, nudging their horses into motion and taking off out of Failnaught, quickly disappearing. Sylvain frowns and tries to figure out what they had been talking about. 

“Wait,” Ingrid says, putting something together faster than Sylvain does. He looks at her. “Are you talking about leading a hoard back here?”

Claude smirks. “Stupid idea, right? But we can hole up inside the buildings and if we manage to get the hoard here before those raiders get here, they probably won’t stick around since they’ll assume the hoard took us out.”

Sylvain considers the option. “You really think it could work?”

“It will depend on the raiders,” Claude confesses. “I don’t know anything about these guys except for the fact that apparently, they don’t like you two very much.” 

Ingrid frowns. “Unfortunately, we didn’t learn much about them before this,” she gestures to her still-injured leg, “happened and we fled.”

Claude nods. “Alright then, we should get inside.” He looks at Sylvain. “You wanna take a roof point? We’re gonna put a few shooters up there just in case.” Claude points out the barricades atop the roofs at the points of the u-shaped building. “You just gotta stay low and you can’t be seen from the ground.”

Sylvain does a mental calculation of the height of the building. The roof is only about 9 feet off the ground, meaning he can probably jump and land without hurting himself in the case of an emergency. Sylvain nods to Claude and Ingrid frowns, grabbing his arm tightly, her nails digging in to show her disapproval. 

Claude nods and points out a ladder on the side of the building. “Take that to get up and pull it up after you. It should fold away.”

“Got it,” Sylvain says. 

Claude looks at Ingrid. “You should probably stick to not climbing ladders. If you go in the western door you can shelter in the meeting room with Marianne, Hilda and the others.”

Claude jogs off then, leaving Ingrid and Sylvain alone. Sylvain turns to walk over to the roof Claude pointed him to but Ingrid grabs his arm, holding him back. He looks at her. 

“What are you doing, Sylvain?” she demands, frowning. There’s something that looks like worry mixed with dismay on her face, but he doesn’t have time to consider the depth of it. 

“I can help protect these people up there, Ing. They’re risking a lot to keep us safe.”

Ingrid, as much as he knows she would like to, can’t fault his logic. Her hand tightens on his arm and she hops forward, almost dropping her crutches as she pulls him into a tight hug. “Don’t be stupid,” she says quietly, still clinging to him. 

Sylvain hugs her back, taking a deep breath. “Yeah, you too.” 

Ingrid pulls away, adjusting her crutches. She reaches one out and taps his shin, eyeing his backpack. “You’re ready to go if we need to?”

Sylvain nods. “Always.” His bag is packed for a short-notice departure as always. Ingrid looks relieved to know that. 

She looks like she’s going to say something else, but Sylvain cuts her off, leaning forward and pressing a kiss to her forehead before he spins away, jogging to the edge of the building and starting the climb up the ladder. When he reaches the top and starts pulling it up after himself, he looks down, but Ingrid is gone and the western door is swinging shut. 

Sylvain takes a bracing breath. She’ll be fine inside and he needs to buckle down and get out of sight. He looks across the u-shaped building and sees Claude hunkering down behind the make-shift cover on the other side, mirroring Sylvain. Sylvain crouches behind the stacked sheets of metal and wooden planks just in time to hear the deafening, ringing shot of a gun from the forest. He freezes and inches forward, squinting into the treeline, looking for the source. Quickly, the first shot is followed by an ear-splitting scream and then two more bangs.

His breath catches when he sees the first figures break from the treeline; it’s definitely not Leonie and Lorenz on horseback leading a hoard. It’s a group of people dressed in combat armour–the same armour worn by the raiders back at the mall that makes his gut twist with a horrible, sickening feeling. They shouldn’t be here yet and they certainly shouldn’t be dragging the limp body Sylvain recognizes. 

Two of the raiders step forward, tossing Ignatz’s unmoving body to the ground. It hits the ground and rolls, dislodging the round glasses off of Ignatz’s face as he is thrown onto his back. Even from this far away, Sylvain can spot the bullet wound in Ignatz’s forehead through the blood splattered over his face, unblinking open eyes staring blankly up at the sky. 

“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” Sylvain hisses under his breath. 

He presses himself down against the roof, his mind racing as more raiders appear. The raiders pour out of the woods at the front of Failnaught, approaching the base head-on. A few figures creep out around the sides and backs, but the charge is led near the mouth of the u-shaped building. There are two other bodies brought out: scouts from Failnaught that Sylvain knows the faces but not the names of. Sylvain takes a deep breath, trying to come up with some kind of plan. 

Unfortunately, any plan he might have been able to come up with is shot straight to hell the moment he hears Miklan’s psychotic laugh. Sylvain doesn’t even need to look to see his brother. He can picture him: strolling out of the woods, carrying a rifle and looking as angry as he had when he had been exiled from Fhirdiad. Footsteps pound over the earth as the raiders swarm forward, pushing into Failnaught and combing through the centre pavilion. 

“There won’t be anyone outside,” Miklan calls out. “They’ll have sequestered inside to try and pretend that no one is here. That was the point of this scouting mission we caught: an early warning system.”

Miklan bangs the butt of his gun against one of the metal crates in the centre of the pavilion and it lets out a low, reverberating clang that sends a shiver crawling up Sylvain’s spine. He bangs it twice more, humming in a way that makes him seem completely deranged. It’s not that Miklan isn’t already a psychopathic monster, but the humming unsettles Sylvain. He has no idea what his brother will do. 

“Oh Little Brother,” Miklan sings. “I know you’re here. You should come out and face me yourself.”

Sylvain tenses and waits as boots hammer over the ground as the raiders swarm forward, starting to pound at the doors. From behind his cover, Sylvain can only see the group of raiders at the western door as they kick and strike the door, trying to break it down. Across from him, Sylvain catches just a glimpse of Claude shifting forward, raising his rifle. There is hardly a moment for him to react before there’s a loud pop and one of the raiders at the eastern door collapses, dead. Claude lunges back behind cover just before a spray of bullets flies in his direction. 

Sylvain takes the cue and raises his own gun, taking aim and hitting three of the raiders at the western door in quick succession. Two of them drop immediately, but he only hits the third in the leg, so the man snarls and turns, firing wildly at the roof of the building. Sylvain flattens himself behind his metal and wood barricade, breathing heavily. 

“Looks like we have a resistance!” Miklan howls, sounding disgustingly gleeful. “Have you seen my little brother? He looks like me but he doesn’t have this fucking scar. I’m also looking for his little blonde whore. She should have a bullet wound in her leg that I’d like to relocate.”

Before Sylvain can lift up and start shooting again, Claude beats him to the punch. “Wait!”

The clearing goes silent as most of the raiders momentarily stop trying to break down the doors of the building. Sylvain peeks his head out and sees that Claude has lifted a hand above his cover. Sylvain frowns. He is about to be turned over. Claude will prioritize his own people. It is the sensible thing to do.

“Your brother is the redhead right?” Claude calls. 

“Have you seen him?” Miklan asks, sounding genuinely curious. 

“Yes,” Claude admits, but then he continues, “but we haven’t seen him or his friend in a week. They stayed here for like five days until her leg was starting to heal and then they took off. They stole one of our horses and disappeared into the forest towards the mountains.”

Sylvain holds his breath, hoping that his brother doesn’t call Claude’s bluff. He watches as Miklan steps a bit closer to that side of the pavilion, staring up at the roof where Claude is hidden behind a metal barrier. 

“He left, did he?” Sylvain has the thinnest of moments to recognize the taunting doubt in his brother’s voice before Miklan bangs his gun against a crate violently. “Try again! I know my brother better than most people. He wouldn’t go anywhere if it’ll put her life at risk.” He turns to the raiders. “Get those doors open. Find her. She’ll draw him out.”

“No,” Sylvain breathed, his heart jumping into his throat. 

Claude stands up just long enough to take a shot at the raiders breaking down the right door before he drops down as Miklan shoots at him. Sylvain stays down this time, not taking even the slightest risk of being seen by his brother. There’s a loud shriek of metal as the western door finally breaks and Sylvain really hopes that the others will have done enough to keep themselves hidden and barricaded away from the doors. 

His hopes prove futile. A tense, breathless minute later, someone inside the bunker screams. Gunshots follow accompanied by more screams. Miklan, still in the centre pavilion, howls with laughter. Sylvain closes his eyes and takes a shaky breath. He steals a glance at the forest, but it is still and quiet. There is no sign of Leonie and Lorenz or Claude’s grand plan. It appears he’s going to have to figure this one out on his own. 

Sylvain peers around the edge of his cover and watches as two raiders reappear, dragging a large man between them and Sylvain swears silently. Raphael is bleeding from a gunshot wound to the shoulder, but he is scowling and struggling against the men holding him. Behind him, another raider appears, this one holding the crumpled, unmoving body of a young woman who Sylvain thinks is named Lysithea. 

Lysithea’s body is dropped into the dirt. Sylvain can already see the red seeping from her stomach and Raphael lets out a pained noise as he’s forced to his knees in front of her. Miklan walks up to Raphael, holding his gun with one hand and looking unamused. 

“Who’s this?” he asks the men who hauled Raphael outside. 

“Just one of the survivors, but I thought that you might use the opportunity to draw your brother out. He doesn’t seem the type to let an innocent man die for him.”

Miklan laughs. “No, he’s not the type. Don’t you see, Little Brother?” He toes Lysithea’s unmoving form unapologetically. “This is what happens when you keep hiding from me.” He lifts his gun and presses it to Raphael’s forehead. 

“No,” Sylvain murmurs, “no, no, no.”

Before either he or Miklan can do anything, there’s a louder, higher-pitched scream that instantly makes Sylvain’s blood curdle. He knows that scream. He whips his head to the side and stares at the western door as another raider appears, dragging Ingrid with one hand fisted in her long blonde hair and the other pressing a pistol to her temple. 

Ingrid has tears streaming down her face as the man drags her along. Her crutches are nowhere to be seen and Sylvain is about two seconds from jumping out of cover and dropping everything to get to her. He knows that it’s stupid and futile, but he’s running out of options and out of time. 

Miklan gives a wicked grin as the raider drags Ingrid towards him. Ingrid stumbles and puts her weight on her good leg as she stares down Sylvain’s brother, her jaw set and her chin raised despite the tears on her face. Miklan steps closer to her. 

“I knew you’d still be here. Where’s my brother?”

Ingrid keeps her mouth shut as she stares down Miklan. Miklan’s grin curls into a sneer as he reaches out, grabbing Ingrid’s face. She gasps and stumbles as he forcefully tilts her head side to side, snarling. 

“Little bitch,” he basically spits. “Fraldarius would have killed for you. My brother has too. I wonder what he would do if I did this,” he cuts off, raising his gun and pushing it under her chin until her head tilts back. 

Sylvain is jumping out from behind cover before he can stop himself. “No!” he yells. 

Miklan’s head snaps towards him, smirking as he takes in Sylvain standing on the edge of the roof. “There he is.” He tugs on Ingrid, wrapping an arm around her neck as he restrains her. He clamps a hand over her mouth and Ingrid struggles, trying to pry his hands off, but Sylvain knows first hand how strong his brother is. 

“Let her go, Miklan. I’m the one you want.”

“Hm,” his brother muses. “While that isn’t untrue, I don’t just want you, Little Brother. I want to _hurt_ you. And since you care so much about this one,” he tightens his grip on her face and Ingrid struggles harder against him, “I thought this might sweeten the deal for me.”

Before Sylvain can move, there’s a blur of movement at the edge of the forest that draws his eyes. Leonie bursts out of the woods, holding a bell in one hand as her horse gallops back towards Failnaught. 

The scene unfolds in slow motion. 

Leonie peels off at the last second, breaking around the side of Failnaught and cantering around the outside, and the first Commons emerge from the woods. They are all howling and shrieking, hands clawed and extended in their efforts to follow after the ringing bell. 

The raiders start to yell and panic, almost immediately opening fire into the hoard, but that just makes the Infected charge faster. They keep pouring out of the forest, their numbers seemingly endless. Between the panic of the shootout inside Failnaught and the continued clanging of Leonie’s bell, there isn’t enough time for any sensible defence as the Infected spill into Failnaught, clawing and slashing and biting at whoever they can reach.

Sylvain locks eyes with Ingrid and Miklan snarls, raising his gun, but then there’s a blur of motion and Raphael tackles Miklan from the side, trying to rip the gun from his hands. The three of them crumple to the ground in a heap and Ingrid immediately shoves Miklan off of her and starts crawling away. 

Miklan is thoroughly distracted by the large bulky man that had thrown himself into the fray, but not thrown off enough that he can’t lift his gun and fire a few shots into Raphael until the larger man crumples, unmoving. Ingrid stumbles to her feet, limping, a few feet away from Miklan and barely manages to draw her knife before an Infected stumbles towards her. 

“Fuck,” Sylvain curses and without thinking, he jumps down off the building. 

He hits the ground hard, the pain causing his knees to lock and groan in protest. He stumbles forward, cursing under his breath as he staggers towards the chaos. He lifts his gun just in time to blow the head off a Common that is lurching towards him and then he shoves forward until he can wrap an arm around Ingrid’s waist. She struggles against him for a moment, obviously assuming the worst. 

“Ingrid!” Sylvain says sharply. She immediately stops struggling, her head turning towards him as relief washes through her green eyes. 

“Sylvain,” she sounds like she might cry and every instinct he has tells her to kiss her. 

He doesn’t. Instead, he pulls her back behind one of the metal crates in the pavilion just as a crack of gunfire rings out. Ingrid hunches down beside him and Sylvain shoves his pistol into her hands while he draws his knife. She tries to hand the gun back but he shakes his head firmly. 

“You’re the better shot,” he reminds. 

“Sylvain, we are surrounded by people with guns who are, in case you hadn’t noticed, trying to murder us.”

He leans over to her, tapping their foreheads together. “Then cover me,” he says. “Can you walk?”

She nods. “Well enough to manage.”

“Come on then.”

He leans out from the side of the crate and immediately stabs a Common in the leg before kicking it to the ground and slashing its throat and stabbing it in the heart, killing it. Ingrid shoots over him, picking off two more Infected. Sylvain leads the way as they bob and weave through the swarm of Infected filling the central pavilion. 

He can hear the exchange of gunfire on the eastern side. Claude is probably trying to give them cover, but the Infected seem to have done a good enough job of distracting Miklan’s gang enough that they can creep around the outside, taking out any Infected leering in their direction. 

“Sylvain!” Miklan roars behind them. Sylvain ducks instinctively and the metal siding of the building beside him screeches as bullets tear into it. 

Sylvain wraps an arm around Ingrid, putting himself between her and his brother as he shoves her, more bullets following the first and narrowly missing them. They reach the opening in the u-shape at the front of Failnaught and Sylvain stabs and shoves another Infected that lurches into his space. Ingrid pushes past him, stepping outside the bounds of the area. She lost her bag when she had been dragged out of the building, but Sylvain has his. He can only hope that it’ll be enough. 

“Let’s go,” he says, pushing her along.

“Hey! Sylvain! Ingrid!” 

They look up to see Leonie snipe two Infected from horseback as she pulls to a stop in front of them. She holds out a hand to Ingrid. Sylvain lifts Ingrid up, throwing her up into the saddle. Ingrid yelps, but secures her arms around Leonie as Leonie reaches out to Sylvain. Sylvain looks back hesitantly and is just in time to kick a Common away from him as it gurgles before Ingrid shoots it in the head. 

“Can you take three?” he asks Leonie. 

Leonie looks uncertain for a moment, but then there’s a gunshot from her left and Lorenz reappears, also still on horseback. Leonie waves Sylvain over to Lorenz. “Get on with him.”

Sylvain takes one step towards Lorenz, but then there’s another gunshot and a cry of pain. His head snaps back around and he sees Leonie slump forward, sliding almost off the horse. Sylvain lunges and just barely catches her before she hits the ground. Cautiously, he lowers her until she’s on the ground next to the horse, her gun draped across her chest. He grabs her rifle, lifts it, and instinctively fires in the direction the shot came from. 

Sylvain watches in disbelief as his shot sinks into his brother’s chest. Miklan staggers back, coughing and looks down at the red patch blooming into his shirt. Through the chaos of the surroundings, Sylvain can’t hear Miklan laugh, but he sees it. His brother smirks and staggers. Then, a Common grabs him by the neck. And then it sinks its teeth into his brother’s shoulder. 

“Leonie!” Lorenz leaps from his horse and gathers Leonie’s body into his arms, pressing his hands over her stomach where she had been shot, but her eyes are already closed and Sylvain knows that she’s a lost cause. 

He staggers up. “Lorenz,” he starts. 

The man scowls. “Get out of here,” he snarls. “Take the fucking horse.”

Sylvain steps back, his brows knitting and he lifts Leonie’s gun to shoot down two Common that are approaching. Lorenz stays on the ground, cradling Leonie. The man doesn’t even look up as more Infected start to steer in their direction. There’s a jerk on his backpack and Sylvain stumbles to see that Ingrid, still atop the horse, had grabbed the straps of his bag. 

“We have to go,” she says. The words are almost lost in the yelling and screaming around them, but Sylvain reads her lips well enough to get her meaning. 

He feels sick, but he hauls himself unsteadily into the horse’s saddle behind Ingrid. She grabs the reins and tugs left, urging the horse to move. It whinnies beneath them and Sylvain grabs onto Ingrid’s waist as the horse takes off under her. Ingrid blindly steers the horse away from the destruction and chaos behind them at Failnaught and into the forest away from all the people that have and will die defending them. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come on.... it's a zombie au there's gonna be a body count.


	5. act v. home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A refuge and a journey.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks to mish for making this actually readable. 
> 
> warnings for violence as well as mild sexual content

Sylvain has no idea how to sit on a horse. He holds onto Ingrid for dear life as she clings to the saddle, pushing her feet in the stirrups, and guides the horse into a hard sprint down the forest trail. The horse runs the trail like it knows it which is a huge relief. Sylvain, when he can, tightens one arm around Ingrid and turns to look over his shoulder to make sure that they’re not being followed by Miklan’s raiders or more Infected. 

Thankfully, the horse outspeeds the few Commons that try to follow them when they break away. He and Ingrid seem to somehow be getting off scot free. 

They ride for long enough that his legs and ass start to hurt. Then, suddenly, Ingrid pulls the reins and draws the horse to a stop at the base of a steep hill that there is no way it can safely climb. Sylvain jumps off as soon as they stop moving and immediately scans the trail and surrounding area for anything dangerous, but it appears like they are alone. 

He reaches up and touches Ingrid’s wrist. “Hey,” he says. “Come on.” 

Her white-knuckled grip on the reins loosens as she looks down at him. She shakes her head out, clearing it, and then plants her hands on his shoulders. He catches her as she half-jumps, half-slides off the horse, holding her weight before slowly letting her down so that she doesn’t have to stand on her right leg. Ingrid clings onto him after he sets her down, almost as if she doesn’t realize she’s doing it, and Sylvain lets his touch linger on her waist in return. 

Her cheeks are flushed with exertion when she does turn away and she pushes on the flank of the horse, shooing it back towards Failnaught. It trots away from them down the trail until the swish of its long tail disappears into the woods. They both stand there and watch for a moment. 

“Will it make it back?” he asks.

“Horses are intelligent creatures,” Ingrid answers automatically. “I think there’s a good chance it will either make it back or take care of itself just fine.”

Sylvain looks her up and down quickly. “How’s the leg? And, you know, the everything else?”

He’s pretty sure that she has a bruise on the side of her neck from being dragged around by Miklan and his thugs. Sylvain himself has aches in his knees from the drop off the roof. 

“I’m okay,” Ingrid assures. She looks up the face of the ravine in front of them. “I think there’s a cabin up there if we can walk for about fifteen minutes.”

Sylvain frowns. “How did you know that?”

“I spent a lot of time with Marianne and Claude. They told me about it. Apparently, they used to use the place as a rest spot when they were scouting out this far, but they stopped coming out here when the hoard moved in. Maybe since they drew the hoard to Failnaught, it’ll be free for use again.”

Sylvain nods and strips his backpack off, handing it to her. Ingrid takes it, a confused frown flickering onto her face. 

“Sylvain? What are you doing?” she asks. 

He steps in front of her and bends one knee. “Come on,” he urges. “You can’t walk up this slope, so I’ll carry you.”

“You don’t have to,” Ingrid tries to argue but Sylvain just laughs, waving her off. 

“Come on, I’m not making you walk up a steep hill when you can still barely move your leg. Just get on my back, Ingrid.”

She sighs, but then she pushes the tops of his shoulders to lower him down further. Her knees touch either side of his torso and Sylvain loops his arms under them. Ingrid’s arms wrap around his shoulders and her breath falls on the back of his neck. He stands up slowly, carefully acclimating himself to the extra weight. She’s warm against his back and her fingers dig into him as she holds on.

“Is this okay?” Ingrid asks, her breath tickling his ear. 

Sylvain shuffles for a second, hiking her up higher. Ingrid squeaks and he freezes. “As long as I’m not hurting you.”

“I mean, a little,” she confesses, “but no less than walking would. And less than walking up the hill would.”

He nods and wiggles his fingers under her knees before starting up the hill. It’s a slow process, probably taking twice as long as it would have taken normally, but Sylvain is determined to save her as much pain as he can. When they reach the top of the ridge, he wonders if he might get away with carrying her for a little longer, but she almost immediately swats at his shoulder, gesturing to set her down. 

He lets her down carefully and takes his backpack from her. “So Marianne told you this cabin was where?”

Ingrid stops to look back down the ravine and then forward at the very narrow trail ahead of them. “Should be about fifteen minutes down this trail on foot,” she answers. 

Sylvain glances up at the sky. The late afternoon paints it a rapidly darkening blueish-purple colour. Fall is almost over and the days are getting shorter–their available travel time keeps getting cut shorter and shorter. Sylvain doesn’t want to be travelling in the dark, not with a hoard so close by still, so he would love to get to the cabin. Fifteen minutes is just short enough that he feels confident pressing forward. Then, when sheltered, they can take a long rest to get some sleep.

As important as he knows the shelter will be, he almost dreads it, afraid of how his mind, previously distracted by _trying not to die_ , will process the day’s events. 

Ingrid’s first few steps are alright before she stumbles on her right leg and he reaches out without thinking, curling his arm around her waist. Ingrid leans into him and Sylvain tights his hand over her hip, lifting more of her weight whenever she has to step with her right foot. It slows their pace and it definitely distracts him. Half of his attention becomes devoted to the ground, making sure that he holds more of her weight when she steps with her bad leg. The other half tries to stay alert for any sudden movements or sounds around him. He’s frustrated with the division of his attention, but at least he can make sure that she’s in as little pain as possible. 

They walk along quietly. The silence lets Sylvain’s inner voice spin through his head as he starts to think fully about the day’s events. Failnaught had been nothing but good to them and their involvement had not only led a group of violent raiders to them, but also an entire hoard. 

Ignatz, Lysithea, Raphael, and Leonie are dead. Lorenz, if his fixation on Leonie had been any indication, is likely dead or Turned. They have no idea what happened to Claude or Hilda or Marianne or any of the others. They’re likely dead or injured or Turned or hopeless. 

In addition, it had destroyed most of the physical integrity of the space which means that even if there are survivors, there will be no safe way to reconstruct Failnaught to the beacon of strength it had been pre-Miklan. 

After ten minutes of walking, they spot the cabin. Its exterior is overgrown with weeds and well-hidden by trees, but it looks reasonable enough for a one-night stop. When they reach the cabin, Sylvain releases Ingrid to do a quick sweep around it. The window on the south side is broken but boarded over. The door is sturdy but not locked. There’s even a stack of firewood covered in weeds just behind the cabin and a chimney that indicates a fireplace inside. 

Sylvain walks back to Ingrid, holding an armful of the chopped wood. He gestures to the door. “Shall we?” 

Ingrid nods and hobbles to the door, pushing it open. She leads the way inside and Sylvain observes the interior of the cabin. It’s sparsely furnished. There’s a table and one wooden kitchen chair close to the door, an empty bookcase, one double-sized bed, and an overturned armchair by the fireplace. 

Sylvain drops his bundle of wood next to the fireplace and tips the armchair upright. Ingrid hobbles over to the bed and sits on the edge of it. She immediately starts unbraiding her hair, running her fingers through the long blonde strands while staring blankly at a scuffed floorboard. 

Sylvain drops a few smaller pieces of wood into the fireplace and pulls out his lighter. He gives it a small shake and notices that he’s almost out of lighter fluid. He frowns, but leans forward, catching some of the small tinder pieces. He pockets the lighter and pokes at the tiny flame with another piece of tinder until a slightly larger piece of wood catches. Sylvain lingers a moment longer until he’s sure that the fire won’t sputter out and then drops his pack on the floor between the armchair and the bed, sinking down into the armchair. 

Ingrid is looking at the fire when he looks at her. “What have we done, Sylvain?” she asks quietly. 

He closes his eyes. He can still hear the screams from inside the building when the raiders had broken in. “Nothing good,” he mutters. 

“God–Leonie, Ignatz, Raphael, Lysithea–they all died for us. Because of us.”

“I killed people today,” Sylvain mutters. 

They had talked about the dead raiders back at the mall after Ingrid had woken up from her recovery. Killing people is different from killing Infected. It is harder and it makes one feel rotten inside. It should be everyone who is left against the Infected. Raising arms against a non-Infected person feels wrong in so many ways. 

But, the worst part is that it didn’t feel wrong. He killed the man back at the mall to get them a way out and he killed the people today to protect Ingrid and the other members of Failnaught. He doesn’t regret it.

“Sylvain,” she says quietly. 

“Ingrid, I shot my brother,” he says. His chest lightens with the words and it almost feels like relief. “I saw that Common bite him and I shot him right in the chest.” He rubs his face, feeling torn. “God, I’m not even sorry about it!”

“Miklan was a horrible person,” Ingrid says firmly. “Sylvain, he hurt so many people just because he wanted power back at the Community and then he’s killed so many people since then just trying to hurt you.”

Sylvain stands up from the armchair. His gaze catches on the crackling fire and he silently stares into the orange flames for a moment before turning to face Ingrid. “He tried to hurt you because of me.” His voice drops in volume to a hoarse whisper. “I’m sorry.”

Ingrid is looking at him. Her hair is almost all free of the heavy braid and there’s a dark smudge of dirt just above her right eyebrow. Her lips are pressed together and her eyes look completely and utterly exhausted. The hard line of her lips wobbles at his words. 

“That’s not your fault. That’s his fault.”

Sylvain sighs. “If you had been with anyone else–” he starts, but she scowls and cuts him off. 

“–Sylvain, if I had been with anyone else, I would have died from the bullet wound. Felix and Dimitri and Glenn–none of them would have brought me to Failnaught. You’ve always been the most trusting. None of them would have trusted the people of Failnaught and we definitely wouldn’t have made it if we hadn’t gone to Failnaught. Miklan would have caught up with us or I would have died from an infection that Marianne staved off.” She shakes her head. “I wouldn’t have made it with anyone else.”

Sylvain’s lips twitch into a sad smile. “God, they were good to us, weren’t they?”

Ingrid laughs faintly and he can see that her green eyes are glassy in the firelight. “They really were. They were so _human_.” 

Sylvain’s eyes drop, reflexively, to his bag’s outside pocket where Ignatz’s faded drawing of Sylvain and Ingrid is folded for safekeeping. Sylvain swallows a hard lump in his throat. 

He walks over to her and sits on the bed next to her. “I thought we were going to die back there,” Sylvain confesses. He reaches up and twirls a lock of her long hair around his finger. “It was pretty stupid jumping off that roof.”

She elbows him lightly–hard enough to reprimand silently, but not hard enough to actually punish–and then reaches up and unwinds her hair from his hand, frowning as she does so. She pauses halfway through the motion, a pensive look creeping over her face before she tugs her hair free. 

“Sylvain, where’s your knife?”

He blinks. “My knife? Why?”

“Just trust me, okay?”

He hesitates, but he gets off the bed and crouches on the floor, digging through the outside pocket of his pack to retrieve his knife. He brings it back over to Ingrid. Ingrid rests the blade across her thigh as she collects her hair over one shoulder. 

Then she picks up the blade and starts hacking at her hair. 

“Woah!” Sylvain exclaims, grabbing her wrist to stop the motion before she can saw off more than a few strands. “What are you doing?”

She lowers the knife, looking a tiny bit ashamed. “I want it gone,” she mumbles. 

Sylvain remembers how she had been dragged out of the building by her hair and the way that Miklan had touched it. He carefully pries her fingers off the knife and puts it on the bed between them. He nudges her up and helps her hop over to the wooden chair where he pushes lightly on her shoulders until she drops into the seat. 

He retrieves the knife and moves to stand behind her, carefully gathering her hair back. Then, he pulls it in a long, blonde sheet cascading down her back. Sylvain starts with small bundles of it, cutting as cleanly as he can. He works the blade through her hair shortly until it starts to drop onto the floor beneath them. Ingrid stays silent the whole time he works. The silence is punctuated only by their breathing and the crackle of the fire in the background. 

He cuts her hair short–shorter than it has ever been–so that it hangs around her chin in soft, golden half-curls. When he’s done, he steps back and walks around her, putting the knife down on the table. Ingrid looks stuck somewhere between serious and amazed as she lifts her hand up to brush at her newly chopped locks. It’s definitely not a neat or even trim, but her hair is short. 

“Sylvain,” she breathes quietly. 

“I could have done better with a pair of scissors, but those are unfortunately in demand, aren’t they?” he jokes. 

A beautiful smile curls up her lips and in the faint glow of the firelight, Sylvain is suddenly forced to rethink his conversation with Hilda. Ingrid looks beautiful here. She’s wearing ill-fitting clothing and her face is dirty and her hair is choppy and short and she’s still the most beautiful person that Sylvain has ever seen. 

_Because_ _of course he is in love with Ingrid. Probably always has been._

“Thank you,” Ingrid says. 

He nods. “Yeah. Just, try not-” _to get far from me_ “–to get grabbed again.” _Don’t go getting grabbed by anyone that isn’t me. Don’t leave my sight. Don’t leave me behind. Don’t tell me that you don’t feel the same about me._

Silence stretches between them. It feels staggering. His adrenaline is fading and it finally reminds him of the post-encounter safety training drilled into his head: they haven’t checked for bites. Sylvain pats along his own arms, probing fingers searching for bitten-through fabric or any wounds. Ingrid frowns, rising to her feet. She visibly still favours her left side but doesn’t seem worried about herself, reaching for him instead. 

“You have to stop being reckless,” she mutters, reaching for his jacket and dragging the zipper down until he shrugs out of it.

Ingrid leans in, her hands patting across his chest before her arms slide around him as she checks his sides and back. Her fingers snag in the material of his sweater in her haste and Sylvain grabs her arms, stilling her. Eyes locked with hers, he glides his hands up her arms to her shoulders and then lets his fingers gently probe at her neck and back, returning the favour. 

The moment is painfully intimate. His chest rises and falls against her. She’s very close to him. Sylvain’s tongue feels like lead and his throat is like sandpaper when he tries to swallow. His response to her scolding gets stuck halfway out of his mouth. 

His hands stop exploring, catching on her elbows. He grips her arms to hold her still as her gaze slides up to his. She’s still frowning, waiting for him to reply.

“If you’re in danger, I make no promises,” he retorts, finally forcing the words out. 

Ingrid tugs her arm free of his grip. Her hand fists in the front of his shirt, her frowning twisting into a full scowl. “Don’t _do_ that, Sylvain! Don’t act like your life is worth less than mine!” 

“Isn’t it?” he rebuffs. “I’m the reason that Miklan even pursued us here. I’m the reason those people are dead and I’m the reason they even had to bring in the hoard in the first place. Failnaught will never be a safe space again and it’s my fault.” His fingers dig into her waist as he pulls her closer. “And I won’t apologize for saving you because I’m not sorry!”

“You can’t just say that,” Ingrid protests. 

“I will,” he promises. “I’ll keep doing it.”

“If you don’t want me to get hurt,” she points out, growing incensed, “then don’t take stupid risks!”

He frowns, leaning into her. “We’re both alive, Ingrid!”

“This time! Who knows what will happen the next time you throw yourself into a hoard of Infected to keep them from getting to me! What if you get bit, Sylvain? What am I supposed to do then?”

“You shoot me and you move on, just like the training says,” he responds immediately. 

“Would you do the same for me?” she asks. 

He recoils, leaning away from her before he is drawn right back into her space. “No!” His ire drains away with the realization so quickly that he feels lightheaded. He hesitates. “I couldn’t.” 

She punches him in the shoulder. “Then don’t you _fucking dare_ ask me to do the same!”

“I have to. I need to,” he confesses. 

Ingrid yanks on him until he stumbles and caves to her, their lips crashing together. Sylvain’s hands tighten on her jacket as he kisses her back. She parts her lips to him, her hands scratching at the material of his sweater. 

She struggles with it for a moment before she jerks it up, rolling it halfway up his torso. A groan breaks into a growl in his throat the moment she touches him. Sylvain pushes her back, lifting her partly on her feet until her back meets the wall of the cabin. Whatever coherent thoughts he had had before she kissed him are gone, replaced by the urge to be as close to her and to make her feel as protected as possible. He undoes her coat and Ingrid twists as she struggles to keep kissing him and simultaneously shrug it off. 

Sylvain breaks the contact of their lips so that they can breathe, but he doesn’t step away from her, still crowding her against the wall. In the dim firelight, Ingrid’s eyes are glowing with want and he pushes aside every rational thought he has and clings to the string in his chest that glows when she touches him. It’s the part of him that is just grateful to be alive–the part of him that is grateful to touch her and hold her because she is with him and she is alive and he is in love with her. 

He kisses the side of her jaw and Ingrid gasps. Sylvain, determined to get her to make that sound again, kisses up her face until he reaches her ear. Ingrid hums as he drags his teeth over it, lolling her head away from him. His hands twist into the material of her sweater and shirt as he trails his lips down, sucking hard kisses into the side of her neck. 

He kisses down her neck and slides his hands under her shirt to rest on the warm skin of her sides and back in one motion. He reaches the high neck of her shirt and bites over it. Ingrid whines, pulling on his hair and his shirt as he does so. 

He leans away from her just enough to see her eyes blink open. Her gaze is heavy with lust and Sylvain wants nothing more than to pin her to the wall of the cabin and continue the frantic pace that they are proceeding at, but he needs her to be sure. 

“Ingrid,” he whispers. 

She shivers at the low tone of his voice, but then she trails her hand down to grab the neck of his shirt and she pulls. “I’m sure,” she says before he can ask. 

His whole body trembles at her words. Somehow, he wishes she had said stop. He wants her to push him away and remark the line between them that has friends on one side and _something more_ on the other. He wishes she would draw the line–carve it into his chest–so that he doesn’t cross it, blurring it until there’s nothing between them but hurried breaths and gasps. 

But she doesn’t and Sylvain is a fool. This adrenaline pumping through his veins is entirely different from the salty-tasting panic from the mall or the metallic tang of blood as they hid from the Clicker. His heart races when her breath hitches and she leans into him. The magnetic pull of _Ingrid_ and _being alive_ and _being alive with Ingrid_ renders him spineless. 

His sweater and shirt disappear, tossed behind him as Ingrid’s touch, cold but insistent, reels him back into her. One of her hands glides down and Sylvain openly shivers into her touch. He rolls her shirt up slowly, trying to slow the pounding of his heart beneath her palm. Every action since their lips first met has been hurried and panicked and Sylvain does not want it to be. 

He wants to feel alive. He wants to make her feel alive. Even if it’s just tonight–one night recklessly spent holding her to him–he wants her to feel him. Even if she is just clinging to him because he is the only one left.

He holds her against him, kissing her until neither of them can breathe. Ingrid gasps, her body surging against his as she draws in a desperate lungful of air. Sylvain kisses her jaw and the hand on his chest rises up, gripping his shoulder and then the hair at the back of his neck. His mind is humming at her closeness and he drags his nose, featherlight, against the curve of her neck as he exhales shakily. 

“Ingrid,” he whispers. His lips linger against her skin and her chest heaves, pushing against his.

Her eyes, closed sometime during the shedding of sweaters and shirts, flicker open, half-lidded and heavy in the firelight. “Sylvain,” she murmurs. There’s a raw edge to her voice. It catches Sylvain’s fluttering heart and puts it in her hands. 

He rests his forehead against her collarbone, trembling. “What do you want?” His voice is nothing more than a low rumble in his chest. 

Her right hand brushes up across his scalp, combing his hair through her fingers as she nudges his head up, locking their eyes again. Her lips are flushed and parted and Sylvain is sure that there has never been anything more beautiful than the sight before him. The hand in his hair drops down, wavering, and he catches it. His face is surely red and his eyelids feel heavy as he leans into her and raises her hand to his mouth, kissing the inside of her palm. 

“I want you,” Ingrid says. The line gets blurrier. Her eyes flicker with something darker. 

Sylvain guides the tips of her fingers over his bottom lip, not daring to break eye contact. “Then let me,” he says quietly. 

Ingrid’s breath hitches when he lifts her up. Sylvain is strong enough, and lost in her enough, that she feels as light as a feather as he carefully lays her down on the bed. He’s careful with her injured leg as he sets her down. He tries to pull his hands back, but Ingrid wraps her arms around his torso and almost pulls him down on top of her. 

Sylvain leans in, letting her guide him, and kisses the line of her collarbone. The sound of the fire behind them fades to nothing but a hollow hum as Ingrid lets out a short, humming whine. She smells like sweat and dirt. Sylvain has to remind himself to breathe–the intimacy of the moment is nearly stifling. 

He stops himself when she shifts, wincing. 

“Wait, Ingrid,” he says. His voice is breathy and tight in a way that Sylvain has never heard himself sound. She has stolen something from him tonight. He never wants to take it back. 

“Sylvain.” Her fingers play up the side of his face, tingling where they touch his jaw. “I want this.”

The commotion in his head–the love, the adoration, the confusion, and the roiling self-hatred–are not enough to drown out her words. She is sure. The defiance in her eyes is going to burn him alive. 

He stops hesitating.

When they’re done and spent, Ingrid rolls into him, burying her face into the crook of his neck and Sylvain’s arm loops around her waist. She falls asleep immediately, almost before the sweat cools on their bodies. Sylvain lingers in the moment, curling his fingers through her short, choppy hair. He sighs deep in his chest and rubs his thumb across her cheekbone lightly. 

Her face wrinkles when he does so, but she doesn’t stir, relaxing into his touch after a moment. He smiles faintly, admiring her soft expression. He wonders, then, how he had ever been stupid enough to mistake his friendship with her–his protectiveness and adoration of her–for _just_ friendship. 

He had loved her as a kid and, when he thinks about it, he had never stopped. It had been something he had shoved down and denied for Glenn’s sake because Glenn got there first. But, he can’t push it down anymore. Even if she’s just clinging to him because he’s the one here and because of the coiling relief of being alive. 

Her weight against him, curled against his side and radiating warmth, feels right. It makes him think of the nights they spent in the safehouse in Fhirdiad. They had started the nights on opposite sides of the single bed, but Sylvain had woken up every day, without fail, with Ingrid’s legs tangled in his and their arms wrapped around or reaching for each other. 

He pulls away from Ingrid’s embrace just far enough to crawl out of the bed and grab for his bag, detaching the bedroll attached to the bottom. He spreads the blankets from it out on top of Ingrid’s waist. Sylvain can’t help the way his eyes linger on her as a small smile pulls at his lips when he slowly covers her. She is beautiful. She looks peaceful. He pulls on his boxers and crawls back under the blankets next to her. Ingrid makes a displeased noise in her sleep and blindly reaches for him until she taps his chest. 

She curls back into him, still mostly asleep, and Sylvain’s smile widens. He tucks her hair back again and cranes his neck to press a kiss to her forehead. His arms curl around her waist as he tugs her close to him and closes his eyes. 

Sylvain falls asleep to Ingrid’s slow, relaxed breathing and the crackling of the fire beyond them. 

* * *

He wakes up alone in bed. The blanket is tucked around him loosely and it falls to his waist when he props himself up on his elbows, scanning the small cabin. Ingrid is dressed and sitting at the table, pouring over something she has spread out on the table. He swallows dryly, rubbing a hand through his tousled hair. Ingrid doesn’t seem to notice that he is awake. Sylvain kicks aside the blanket and swings his legs to the ground.

He stands quietly and grabs his sweater from the armchair where it had been tossed. He gets halfway through pulling it on before Ingrid turns to look at him. She blushes at his state of undress and immediately looks away. Sylvain grabs his pants and yanks them on as he crosses the cabin, moving to lean over her shoulder to look at what she’s looking at. 

It’s the map that they had taken from Fhirdiad. She’s been marking it up. The campsite where they spent their first night outside of the city is circled, as is the mall where they had first run into Miklan and the raiders. There are a bunch of question marks along the road and a large circle traced around the sheltered mountain region where Garreg Mach is supposed to be. 

“What are you doing?” he asks.

Ingrid points out a spot in the forest that he had missed, the black pen blending in with the dark markings of the map. “According to Lysithea–” Ingrid pauses, frowning and Sylvain’s heart twists. Lysithea had been sharp around the edges, but she had still been very sweet and she’s dead now. Ingrid seems to shake the guilt off faster than Sylvain does as she continues, “This is approximately where Failnaught was.” She puts the pen to the page and draws a line southwest from that point until she stops to draw another, smaller circle. “This is kind of where we are.” She draws the pen along the marked trail through the trees for a few seconds until she breaks the line of the circle she had drawn around Garreg Mach. “This is where we might run into the Community there.”

Sylvain nods, moving his hand down to the mall. He traces the road there with his hand until he reaches the mark for Failnaught. “This took us just over 9 hours in the car,” he says. “I stopped to siphon gas a couple of times, but I was going 100 kilometres an hour most of the time.”

Ingrid nods. She scribbles down ‘9 hours’ by the road. She moves her pen to Failnaught and writes ‘8 days plus 7 days’. She goes back down to the mall and a few centimetres north to where they had probably rested the night before. She writes in ‘1 day’ and then does the same at the campsite. 

“So,” he says, tallying it up in his head. “Eighteen days, but nineteen if you count today.” 

“Since we left Fhirdiad, yeah,” she confirms. She reaches back as if to fiddle with the tip of her braid, but her hand grasps air and she awkwardly redirects to rub at the short, choppy ends of her hair. 

Sylvain’s smile twitches. “Do you regret it?” He wants to touch it–to run his fingers through her hair and tell her that she’s beautiful, but he doesn’t. 

“I don’t think so,” she says. “Maybe I will when I can’t put it up anymore, but I think I like it.”

“It looks good on you,” he replies instinctively. He doesn’t know why he says it, but Ingrid’s cheeks flush when he does and he watches her turn back to the map and he sees the redness bloom into her ears too. 

“Thanks,” she mumbles. 

He wants to ask her if she’s okay and ask why she’s so withdrawn this morning, but he’s also deathly afraid of the answers that she might give him. She had fallen into him last night easily enough, but he knows it had probably just been a mix of confusion and adrenaline. He doesn’t want to cross this line with her, especially since, as they just calculated, it has only been 27 days since Glenn had died. 

He steps away from her instead and reaches for his bag, digging for the rations he has packed. He finds a bunch of packages and he exhales in relief. After a quick tally in his head, he figures that there are enough for probably 12 days. Thankfully, going by the trail Ingrid has marked, it doesn’t look like they’re going to have to walk for 12 days to reach Garreg Mach. They might though, if Ingrid’s leg gets worse. 

Still, he pulls out two packages, handing one to Ingrid and keeping the second for himself. She blinks and takes it cautiously. 

“Do we have enough for this?”

He sits in the chair by the fire and nods to her. “We’ll be fine.” He waves towards the map. “What does the map say about how long it should take us?”

“Well,” she replies, “if I could move at a normal pace, it would probably only take us a week, but with this,” she gestures vaguely to her leg, “I estimate probably ten days.”

Sylvain hums. That is actually better than he had predicted. “Wow. So I guess we’ll actually get there before December, huh? Maybe we’ll dodge the worst of the winter.”

Ingrid laughs. “God, wouldn’t that be something.”

She fiddles with the end of her hair again and he has to bite his tongue to keep from asking her about the night before. It’s a can of worms he doesn’t need to open. He opens his rations instead and fishes out a couple pieces of jerky and the nutrient bar inside. He eats slowly, staring into the dead fireplace. The fire he had lit last night has long since burned out and Ingrid had clearly not tried to re-light anything this morning. 

“Do you want to head out today?” he asks. “How’s the leg?”

Ingrid turns in the chair and extends her leg, lifting it slowly and then bending it. Her eyebrow twitches when she’s forced to engage her quads to lift her leg. “It’s better than I thought it would be,” she says. “We can probably go today.”

“Or we can take an extra day here to let you rest,” he counters. 

She frowns. “Sylvain.” 

He shakes his head. “Come on, driving saved us a lot of time, Ingrid. We can take one day to give you a break.” He tips his head towards the bed. “Plus, there’s a real bed here. We’ll be back on the ground out there. Might as well enjoy it while we have it.”

His word choice catches up to him a second later and he’s sure that he looks like a slapped fish for a second, his mouth opening and closing. Ingrid either misses his slip of the tongue or doesn’t care. Or both. By the way she has been acting this morning, withdrawn but not un-Ingrid-like, she’s probably trying to forget what had happened. The thought stings more than he wants it to. 

Ingrid sighs. “One night.”

He grins. “I might go out and see if I can find any tracks or anything around here. Maybe some more wood for the fire too.”

Ingrid’s expression twists. “Sylvain,” she murmurs, “should we go back?”

He hesitates and bites the inside of his cheek. “To Failnaught? I don’t know,” he admits. “It sets us back a day from our goal, but I can’t help but feel responsible for everything we brought up on them.”

“Do you want to see if Miklan’s dead?” Ingrid asks suddenly. 

Sylvain tenses. He does. More than anything, he would love the confirmation that his shot had been enough to kill his brother. But he’s not sure he can walk them both back into potential danger. They led a hoard straight there and Sylvain knows enough about how Infected travel that there is no chance that the hoard has already moved on. 

“I don’t think we can, Ingrid,” he says.

She sighs, but he sees it in her expression that she knows he’s right. “I just wish that it hadn’t ended like that.”

He reaches out, letting his hand just barely graze her shoulder as he tries to offer what stilted comfort he can. “Me too.”

* * *

Sylvain goes out to scout the area and explore down the path a little bit. Ingrid could have come with him, but she makes up an excuse about her leg and wanting to work with the map a little more so that she doesn’t have to. She’s not lying, but she is definitely avoiding all the things that they should talk about–all of the things she has been ignoring since she woke wrapped in his embrace. 

She had kissed Sylvain back at the mall, but had written that off as a momentary lapse in judgement on her part since she had just been trying to get him to not dissociate into bad memories of his brother. She can’t exactly call what had happened last night a simple lapse in judgement. 

She’s not sure if it’s worse that she doesn’t regret it. 

Last night, if she said anything or showed even the slightest sign of hesitation, Sylvain would have stopped. In fact, she had been so horribly clear with him that Sylvain had done exactly as she had asked. Ingrid is, honestly, confused–mostly about her own feelings, nevermind Sylvain’s. As well as she knows Sylvain, she hadn’t been able to get a read on him at all this morning. He had woken up, gotten dressed and then carried on conversation with her as if nothing had happened at all. She wonders if he had even thought twice about the night’s events. 

Ingrid wants to hold him: to cling to him as tightly as she can. But, she doesn’t want to take advantage of Sylvain. This whole situation sets her on edge. She and Sylvain have known each other for so long that maybe these developments in their relationship–however convoluted they may be–should feel natural, but she can’t help feeling that this so-called development is knocking them out of whatever comfortable rhythm they have shared for so long. 

Plus, Ingrid knows Sylvain. She knows how he flirts and ditches and dumps and moves out without batting an eye. He is, as she now knows first hand, a skilled lover which definitely doesn’t come without practice. Ingrid’s only previous romantic entanglement, with Glenn, had only come to be because Glenn was blunt and open with her. Sylvain is not like Glenn in that way. She has no idea if last night means the same thing to him as it does to her. 

Ingrid groans and puts her head in her hands, leaning her elbows onto the table. Her skin is still tingling even though Sylvain is nowhere near her because she remembers the way that he had touched her. She has never been touched like that before. Maybe it’s unfair of her to compare Glenn and Sylvain because they’re so different, but, last night, it had felt like Sylvain was giving a part of himself to her. It had never felt like that with Glenn. 

Sylvain had played the normalcy to perfection this morning. His touches had been light and chaste like always. His smile was charming and polite and had no hints of the roguish desperation she had seen in the firelight last night. Ingrid had only gotten out of bed this morning because of her own uncertainty and because she had wanted to get their shit together for when they actually have to stop hiding from the reality of the situation in this little cabin. 

She had thought, when Sylvain had kissed her back last night, that she was finally figuring out whatever this _thing_ is. His actions this morning had thrown her for a loop, leaving her head spinning and heart sinking. It feels like she’s all over the place–stuck back in Fhirdiad with Glenn and hunched behind a toy store counter and clutching Sylvain like she’s dying in the firelight of a cabin all at the same time. His resolve this morning had been clear and a tiny bit dismissive. Ingrid wishes that she could be that certain that what had happened last night wouldn’t affect their friendship. 

She keeps hoping that–just maybe–this whole mess with Sylvain has been an adrenaline-fuelled mistake that they can both just forget about and move on from. If their relationship depends on their recent actions, Ingrid would rather forget everything than lose Sylvain. Moving on would be the path of least resistance. It’s hard to fathom though when she thinks about the faint bruises that trail down her neck and collarbone. Harder, even, when she considers the pull in her chest leading her back to him– _always back to him_. 

Sylvain makes her feel safe. This has never been a question to Ingrid. Even back in the Community where they had been surrounded by trained fighters and walls to keep the outside world out, there had been something about Sylvain, something different from Glenn or Felix or Dimitri or Ingrid’s own brothers, that had made her feel _seen_. Her whole life, people had been trying to protect her by shielding her and treating her like she was fragile. Sylvain looks to her for guidance. That’s more than she’s had from anyone else, but especially more than she had had from Glenn.

Glenn’s bluntness, while charming at first, had become overbearing and condescending. In the last several months of their relationship, talking to Glenn had felt like talking to a wall. It’s why she had gone to Sylvain when things between her and Glenn had started to get rocky. Because he listens to her and always has. 

Ingrid groans into the table before finally lifting her head up and staring down at the map. She taps a finger over the path that Sylvain had driven for almost ten hours with her, injured and bleeding, in the backseat. Any sane Hunter would have listened to the training that had been ingrained in him, but Sylvain had kept her alive and kept her close. 

It makes her stomach twist. 

Ingrid and Glenn had been together for a few years. Everything about their relationship felt easy and predictable, but as perfect on paper as Glenn was, she was still going to break up with him. She tells herself it has nothing to do with her childhood crushes on both Dimitri and Sylvain, but the latter is harder to ignore these days. 

It’s been 28 days since Glenn died and it still feels like a piece of her had been ripped out of her chest. But, it’s a different piece of her heart than the one that flips every time Sylvain touches her or every time he throws himself recklessly into danger for her sake. 

Sylvain is her best friend. She needs him. It’s a desperate, world-shaking need, but in a world of dead people walking, it’s a terrifying thought. This need that buds in her chest makes it feel like she can’t breathe. She has always loved Sylvain–platonically, completely, maybe even romantically. Whatever feelings she had had for Glenn, are nothing compared to how Sylvain makes her feel– _what_ he makes her feel. That’s a scary idea too. 

Ingrid shakes her head. She can’t spiral here. She has to plot their course to Garreg Mach because if she doesn’t then Sylvain will definitely know that something is up and she really doesn’t want things to be weird. Glenn is dead. Dimitri and Felix and the others are god knows where. Fhirdiad is empty. Failnaught is gone. Ingrid needs Sylvain. He is all she has. 

She looks at the map. There is a trail that runs from the cabin towards the mountains. It’s going to be a very awful hike for her on her bad leg. Like she had said to Sylvain, it normally should have taken them about a week, but she had added three days to that estimate because of her leg. Ingrid only hopes that she won’t slow him down too much. 

She slowly traces out the path in the black pen she’s holding, trying not to think of Lysithea and Ingrid grabbing the pen as it skittered across the floor after the white-haired girl had collapsed with a gunshot wound in her stomach. Ingrid’s traced path is just reaching the point of the mountains when the cabin door swings open and Sylvain ducks back inside. He’s completely drenched and he shakes out his hair, spraying water around the doorway. 

Ingrid stares at him, slowly lowering her pen and letting it rest against the table. “It’s raining?”

Now that she pays attention, she can hear the rain in the background. She had just been too distracted to really notice the sound because it had blended in with the rest of the static in her head. Sylvain sheds his drenched jacket and drapes it over the back of the armchair. It looks like it’s raining heavily enough that it had seeped through his durable coat to drench his shirt around the seams as well. Sylvain reaches for the hem of his shirt like he isn’t thinking. 

Ingrid snaps her eyes away as Sylvain strips his top bare. Heat simmers in Ingrid’s stomach as her mind recalls his warmth from the night before. Valiantly, she keeps her eyes trained on the table as he bustles about behind her, trying to light a fire. 

“It was totally fine when I went out there,” Sylvain complains. “Then I started seeing all these dark clouds moving over, but I figured my luck couldn’t be that bad.”

Ingrid looks back at him and he turns his head, grinning at her. “And?” she prompts. 

He shrugs. “My luck’s that bad.” He turns back to the fireplace for a minute, managing to get some of the small pieces to catch. He brushes his hands off and stands up as the fire catches, gradually growing in size. 

Ingrid tries not to stare at him, keeping her eyes on his face instead of his bare torso even as her fingers twitch in his direction, the buried memory of the night before calling for her to touch him. “And you didn’t come back as soon as it started?”

He rubs at his wet hair. “Yeah, not my smartest decision, but I had noticed a few markers for snares and I wanted to check them. They were empty and I got wet, so that serves me right I guess.”

Ingrid rolls her eyes. “So I guess we just hope that it stops raining by tomorrow, huh?”

Sylvain nods and drops onto the bed, flopping on his back. “Why am I so exhausted?” he mutters. “It’s not like there wasn’t an actual bed.”

Ingrid bites back her immediate snarky response about how their activities last had not been very sleep-related. She looks back down at the map. “I’ll be fine for tomorrow. We can head out then.”

The blankets on the bed rustle as Sylvain adjusts, presumably looking at her. Ingrid flicks her hair so that it hides her face from him. It doesn’t work as well with short hair. Her hands drop uselessly into her lap and she internally curses herself for being weird. She hates it, but her emotions–whatever twisted feelings she has for Sylvain–are warring with the logical and rational side of her. He’s being so _normal_. She hates that too. She lifts the pen and taps the bottom of it against the map in a nervous rhythm. 

“Hey,” Sylvain says. “Just think, in just over a week we’ll be back with Dimitri and Felix. Things might even go back to normal.” He hesitates. “Well, as normal as they can be, all things considered.”

Ingrid spins her pen, smiling. It’s a nice thought–even if it’s an unrealistic one–to consider that they might see their friends again–that she might be able to see her brother–but it’s going to be different. She and Sylvain have been alone for almost a month now and she’s gotten used to it being the two of them. 

It feels like she can read him: his body language, his facial expressions, and his actions. They’ve been a seamless team through the chaos of everything. Ingrid can’t recall a time where she had ever understood anyone’s actions and intentions more than Sylvain’s during the mad escape from his brother at the mall. It’s a partnership that’s deeper than anything she’s ever shared with her family or friends. It’s something that’s purely between her and Sylvain. 

Whatever she and Sylvain were back in Fhirdiad is completely different from what they are now, but she doesn’t regret it. She’s tried to tell him that, to remind him that he’s the reason she’s even still alive, but she’s not sure that he’s gotten it. She feels a bit badly for slowing him down, but he’s the one who has refused time and time again to leave her behind. She’s grateful.

The rain pounds into the roof above them. Sylvain lies back on the bed, closing his eyes with a heavy sigh. Ingrid tucks her hair back and smiles faintly at him. He doesn’t catch the smile, but that’s okay. 

She wants to believe they’ll figure it out. 

* * *

Sylvain is very cuddly when he’s asleep. Ingrid doesn’t know if the good-friend thing to do is push him away or let him stay, but the cabin is cold in the night, despite the blankets they lie under, so she leaves him be. She curls into his warmth, resting her head on his shoulder and welcoming his arms around her waist. 

The cuddling just becomes a slight problem in the morning when she tries to detach herself from him to get out of the bed. For some reason, he seems to hold tighter this morning, fully-clothed, than he had the night before when they had both been bare. She manages to free her legs from the tangle under the blankets, but Sylvain’s face presses into the crook of her neck as he murmurs, still asleep. She rolls her eyes and ends up having to forcefully pry his arms away from her. Finally, she extracts herself from his grip and sits up on the edge of the bed. 

She pokes his shoulder and then his cheek to wake him up. There’s a moment of nothing where Ingrid admires Sylvain’s charming, sleepy features before he groans as his eyes blink open. His hair is a mess thanks to both the rain from the day before and the pillow, giving him healthy–and handsome–bedhead. She reaches out to smooth it over without thinking and Sylvain gives her a lazy smile as she does so. 

Ingrid retracts her hand quickly, her face warming. It feels too domestic and too close for whatever is happening. She jumps up from the bed, wincing as she accidentally lands on her right leg. She carefully kneels down in front of his backpack and digs out a ration pack. Ingrid avoids looking directly at Sylvain as she opens it and fishes out her half of it before tossing it to Sylvain as he sits up. 

He snatches it and mumbles a tired thank you. Ingrid stretches her leg, carefully adjusting the amount of weight she puts on it. It’s been over two weeks since she had received the injury and thanks to Marianne’s care, it feels much better than it has any business feeling considering she has seen how much damage improperly treated bullet wounds can do to a Hunter. Sudden movements still hurt, but she can mostly walk now, even if she’s still a bit slow. 

“You good?” Sylvain asks. He stands up and reaches for his jacket, shaking off the last bits of the previous day’s rain.

Ingrid nods. “Yeah, I feel ok.”

“Cool.” 

Ingrid watches him scoop up his backpack. Guilt twists in Ingrid’s stomach suddenly and she feels bad about losing Glenn’s bag. She pulls on her own coat and fidgets with the torn cuff. This is officially the last item she owns that reminds her of her dead boyfriend. She’s not sure how to feel about that, especially when Sylvain’s posture wilts a bit when he notices the change in her body language. 

She turns away quickly, shoving her hands into her pockets. Ingrid doesn’t have to look to know that Sylvain is staring at her in that slightly worried, almost guilty way that he does when he feels like he’s done something wrong. She curls and uncurls her hands. That look is making her feel strange, especially with the normalcy he had shown yesterday.

She squares her shoulders. “Come on. We should get a move on. It’s not raining right now, but that doesn’t mean it won’t rain later.”

“Ingrid,” he starts. She narrows her eyes at him. 

“I’m fine.”

He knows she isn’t and she knows that he knows, but he doesn’t push her. He gestures to the bed instead. “Help me roll the blankets?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

* * *

It’s almost jarring to sleep outside again after weeks being safe inside between Failnaught and the cabin. Ingrid tells Sylvain to sleep first and he frowns at her until she sharpens her gaze to a glare. He hands her rifle when he curls up and she crosses her left leg under her right and stares around the clearing. The first night is all quiet on her watch and Sylvain reports the same. 

Trudging through the forest along the beat-up dirt trail towards the towering mountain above them means that there are lots of fallen logs and hills to climb which means that Ingrid feels useless and frustrated with her leg. Sylvain has to help her over particularly tall barriers or up steep inclines which takes away from both of their abilities to be on alert. He never complains about it, but Ingrid is sore and exhausted and frustrated every time they stop for the night. 

On their fourth day, almost exactly as Ingrid had predicted based on the map, they break from the forested trail to a dirt road wide enough to fit a car. The trail continues in the forest on the other side of the road, but the road curls up in a similar direction. They consult the map and realize that the road will also lead them into the area where Garreg Mach is supposed to be, though it will probably add anywhere from a few hours to a whole day of travel. 

“We should stick to the trail,” Ingrid says at the same time Sylvain says they should stick to the road. 

He raises an eyebrow. “Ingrid, the road is a much easier walk. No logs to climb over or under and a more gentle incline.”

She huffs. “I’m not a child, Sylvain. The trail is more sheltered.”

“All the better for us to get snuck up on,” he counters easily.

Ingrid frowns. She wants to keep arguing with him, but he does have a point. The start of a headache blooms in her skull so she crosses her arms, conceding. This isn’t worth fighting over. “Fine. We’ll take the road.”

He grins. “Good. Come on. We’ve got to be getting close, right?”

She rolls her eyes, but starts trudging up the muddy road. They’re both still wet from the day previous’s rain, despite the hollowed tree that they had taken shelter in when they had slept. The road is about as muddy and wet as Ingrid feels. Sylvain follows a step behind her and they walk in silence for a little bit. 

The last four days have been like this: awkward silence or stilted conversation that feels nothing like it had before they had fallen into bed together. It makes Ingrid nervous–does this mean that Sylvain is struggling with what happened? Does he want to talk about it? Does he care about her? Are they going to be stuck in this awkward silence forever as they both try to avoid ruining their friendship? It seems like they are as Sylvain keeps his eyes trained on the road ahead, hardly even looking at her.

But, then: “Ingrid, are you going to talk to me?”

She stumbles. “What?”

He laughs faintly, but he’s wearing that self-deprecating smile that she hates. “Ah, never mind.”

Ingrid stops walking and grabs his arm, dragging him to a halt next to her. “Sylvain,” she says firmly, “talk about what?”

“Glenn? Dimitri and Felix? Failnaught? Claude? Us? I don’t know,” he says. “Anything.”

She blinks. “What?”

“It just feels like you’ve been trying to shut me out these last couple days.”

“No,” she says immediately. She takes his hand and squeezes it, _hard_. “I promise, Sylvain, I’m just tired and,” she pauses, looking up the mountain in front of them, “we’re so close that I guess I got distracted.” 

He softens and Ingrid drops his hand and leans away before she can do something stupid like kiss him. “Yeah,” he agrees. “I guess it’s weird to be this close, isn’t it?”

She forces a smile. “But we’re close. We’re so close.”

He winks. “And we did it together, right?”

“Together,” she affirms. “Now, come on. We have to keep going if we’re going to make this little detour worth it.”

Sylvain laughs and Ingrid’s heart flips. She half-jogs a few strides ahead of him and his face splits into a smile that’s wide enough to make her heart sing.

* * *

“We have to be getting close, don’t we?” he asks. 

Ingrid lets out a heavy sigh. “I don’t know,” she admits. “Can I check the map again?”

Sylvain nods, dropping the backpack to his feet. Ingrid unzips the outside pocket and pulls out the map. She crouches, spreading the map across the top of her legs as she studies it. She traces her finger along the road they’ve been following. 

“We should be about here,” she points out. She traces the circle around the point labelled Garreg Mach. “We should have stumbled across a structure or a person or a sign of life hours ago.”

They are getting closer and closer to the cusp of the mountains where they have always been told the Garreg Mach Community is. Of course, it doesn’t help that they don’t know exactly what the Community looks like or if it’s even still there, the pessimistic part of her snarks. 

Sylvain crouches next to her and touches her hand reassuringly. “Hey,” he says. “We’ll figure it out. We know that there’s someone here, right?”

He’s talking about the tire tracks that they had found late last night and followed this morning up the mountain. They had looked similar enough to the bus treads that they had ridden in when evacuating Fhirdiad that she had felt excited for the first time in days. Since then, they’ve been trudging with no signs of life and her excitement has soured. Even so, Ingrid nods. 

“So we’re close.” She turns her hand over, catching Sylvain’s. “We’re so close.” It feels like some horrible, cursed mantra that gets less true the further and further they walk.

He squeezes her hand. “So let’s keep going.”

There’s a rustling noise in the bush ahead of them that catches Ingrid’s attention. Before she can stand up, she hesitates, tightening her grip on Sylvain’s hand suddenly. His eyebrows furrow, signalling that he hears the same sound. He nods to the forest at the edge of the road and they carefully shuffle over, stepping partway into the ditch at the side of the road to wait. 

Ingrid hopes, desperately, that it’s a person. Maybe it’s a scouting party from Garreg Mach. Maybe they’ve made it. 

They’re not that lucky.

About fifty metres up the road, the bushes rustle and part. The _thing_ that lumbers out of the bush is enough to make all of Ingrid’s nerves turn to ice. It looks like a Clicker, but worse. Its head is completely deformed and its body is swollen and bloated. It is groaning and shuffling on mangled legs along the road with long, hooked arms, almost dragging against the ground.

“What the fuck is that?” she breathes.

Sylvain looks just as startled as she does. “I have no idea.”

“It’s not a Clicker and it’s not a Sprinter or a Slasher and it’s sure as hell not a Common.”

“But it’s definitely Infected,” he mutters. Then, he nods towards the treeline, lightly pushing against her hip to nudge her in that direction. Ingrid adjusts her weight, following his lead. “We should–” 

She nods and carefully reaches back, parting a few branches. The first thing she sees is a Common. Ingrid freezes, biting back a gasp. Beyond the first Common–who is looking away from them, _thank god_ –there are half a dozen other lumbering shapes in the shadows of trees ahead of them. The forest is crawling with Infected. 

Her heart leaps into her chest. Whatever muffled or rasping groans the creatures make was apparently insulated enough by the trees and wind that Ingrid and Sylvain had managed to walk straight into the middle of a hoard. By sticking to the road, Ingrid and Sylvain had no way of knowing they were there since the Infected are also visibly concealed in the forest’s shelter.

From their position at the edge of the treeline, Ingrid can see two Sprinters and about half a dozen Commons. She’s sure there are more around, behind trees and bushes, which means that moving through the woods is a suicide mission. She glances back at the bloated, ugly Infected lumbering down the road. 

It has moved closer to them. Ingrid really doesn’t want to test how fast it can move, but she’s not sure they’re going to have a choice. Going into the woods would spell certain death, but the road bears only this one Infected. And yet, they can’t shoot it because the gunshot will bring the rest of the hoard running from the woods. The road curves ahead of them on the other side of the Infected, and there’s a ten-foot ridge on the left side of the road. 

“Sylvain!” she hisses. “What do we do?”

He studies the bloated thing, frowning. “I don’t think it can see,” he realizes. “Its head is fucked up, like a Clicker. I bet it can’t see.” Slowly and quietly, Sylvain pulls his rifle off the side of his bag, holding it in one hand. He’s not stupid enough to shoot at it. 

Ingrid takes a deep breath. “Are you sure?”

“No, but it’s the only shot we’ve got, isn’t it?” 

Ingrid bites her lip. “Yeah, it kind of is.”

“Okay,” Sylvain whispers. “So, we stick to the side of the road and we move as slowly and as quietly as possible.”

She nods. “Let’s go.”

She reaches for his hand again and Sylvain links their fingers, holding tightly as she starts to creep slowly up the side of the road. Her right leg pulses with pain from the crouched movement and she winces. Sylvain notices and slowly stands up to his full height. Ingrid watches the bloated Infected as Sylvain clearly enters what would be its line of vision, but it doesn’t react, still moaning and groaning. Sylvain keeps one hand on his gun, pinning it against his body so that he can still hold Ingrid’s hand.

She lets Sylvain pull her to her feet and they slowly walk forward, trying to be as silent as they can as they get closer to the ugly thing. It lurches towards them and Ingrid freezes. Its whole body tilts, shoulders rolling and arms swinging. A panicked noise bubbles up in her throat, but she stamps it back when it stops moving as abruptly as it had started. It hasn’t noticed them: it’s just off balance due to its misshapen body. Now, It’s only about five metres from them. Ingrid stays perfectly still, holding her breath.

Sylvain nudges her back, urging her to move and Ingrid swallows, cautiously stepping forward. It doesn’t react so she takes another step. She tries to take a third step, but her bad leg seizes and she stumbles, her shoes scuffing a small group of pebbles that go trickling into the ditch beside the road. Ingrid freezes, staring at the Infected. 

It has abruptly stopped groaning and seems to be facing her. This close to it, Ingrid can see that while it is mutated like a Clicker, it has the claw-like hands of a Slasher–hooked nails and spiked fingers that can tear through flesh almost effortlessly. Her heart skips a beat. Its malformed head twists and it lets out a familiar clicking noise. 

“Move!” Sylvain grunts, shoving her hard from behind. 

Ingrid, not expecting the push, trips forward and falls onto her hands and knees. She rolls with the momentum given to her by Sylvain and turns onto her butt, scuttling up the road on her ass, ignoring the sharp scrape of gravel and dirt into her palms. She looks up just in time to see the awful thing lunge forward to where she had been standing. 

Sylvain, having sacrificed his own reaction to save her, is practically helpless when the thing’s fucked up claw sinks into his stomach. His face contorts in pain, but he manages to swing the butt of his rifle around to bash it in the face. The Infected rears back, letting out another series of broken clicks as it sharply draws back its hand. Sylvain staggers, clamping a hand over his side as he looks, panicked, between Ingrid and the Infected. 

Ingrid scrambles to her feet right as Sylvain trips back and falls down, landing on his side and rolling onto his back as he tries to keep a hand clamped over his stomach. Ingrid draws her gun. She knows that this is probably incredibly stupid, but aims at the mutated Infected anyway. It has its back to her, clicking almost curiously in Sylvain’s direction as it looms over him. 

Before she can fire, a faint whizzing noise passes by her and she watches as an arrow flies out of nowhere, sinking into the skull of the Infected. It groans, staggering, and then two more arrows follow after it. One strikes the clawed hand raised to attack Sylvain and the other sinking into the top of its leg.

The Infected, stuck with arrows, screeches loudly. Ingrid looks up at the ridge just up the road and sees three figures standing atop it. The woman in front makes a running leap off the top of the ridge, landing on her feet halfway down and skidding the remaining few feet down to the bottom, already firing another arrow. This one sinks into the back of the Infected’s head, close to the first arrow, and it wails, staggering before careening hard away from Sylvain to the far side of the road. 

Ingrid holsters her gun and breaks for Sylvain’s side. She throws herself down next to him and tears the blanket off the outside of his backpack, pressing the wadded-up fabric down over his stomach. Sylvain’s eyes are unfocused as he stares at his bloodied hands and then at Ingrid. Ingrid feels heat burn behind her eyes and a lump swells in her throat as she watches blood seep into the blanket from the deep wound on his stomach. 

“Don’t move,” she says. A tear rolls over her cheek and a faint frown flickers onto Sylvain’s face. He still looks like he’s a hundred miles away as his eyes settle on her face. 

“You’re safe,” he says. 

Ingrid nods briskly and pushes down against his wound with shaking hands. He flinches, but she doesn’t apologize. Sylvain lifts his bloody hand and brushes aside some of her hair. Her face feels sticky when he grazes her cheek and she bites her lip as another tear streaks down her face. 

“Shut up and stay alive,” she says fiercely. “You’re not allowed to die here.”

Sylvain’s lips twitch. “No dying,” he mumbles back to her, but there’s a faint slur to his words. 

A shadow falls over her and Ingrid’s head snaps back, expecting the looming figure of an Infected, but, instead, she sees a young, green-haired woman, flanked by a man with darker, emerald hair and a serious expression on his face. The woman is, surprisingly, holding what appears to be an ornate sword, and a quick glance beyond her tells her that the bloated whatever-the-fuck Infected is crumpled and unmoving on the ground. 

The woman frowns as she notes Sylvain’s bleeding wound and she turns to shout over her shoulder. “Shamir! Tell Mercedes to be ready. Ashe, Cyril, we’re going to need a stretcher.”

The female archer who had slid down the ridge immediately turns and runs off up the hill, but the other two archers quickly start making their way towards Ingrid. Ingrid’s defensive instincts kick into gear and she fumbles for the knife strapped to the outside of Sylvain’s bag. The woman leans forward, grabbing Ingrid’s wrist and twisting it. The blade clatters to the ground and the woman smoothly kicks it away. She keeps a hold of Ingrid’s wrist as she kneels down, holding up her other hand. 

“Stop,” she instructs. Ingrid blinks in surprise and stares into the woman’s sharp green eyes. “We’re not going to hurt you,” the woman continues quickly. “If you’ve come this far, I’m assuming you are looking for Garreg Mach, right?”

“Yes,” Ingrid breathes, her eyes dropping momentarily to Sylvain’s face. He’s staring at the strange woman. 

The woman smiles, trying to be reassuring, but Sylvain lets out a pained grunt and Ingrid’s attention snaps back to him. Sylvain’s eyes flutter and close and the woman next to her curses under her breath, dropping the thread of conversation. Ingrid tightens her grip on the blanket she’s pressing into Sylvain’s wound. 

“The Big One got him good,” the woman says, sounding frustrated. “We need to get him back to the Monastery.” She looks over her shoulder at the man who had accompanied her over to Ingrid and Sylvain. “Seteth, do we have a stretcher?”

He shakes his head. “Not on us. Dedue and Alois were following us about a hundred metres back. They’ll be with us shortly.”

The woman presses her lips together. “What’s your name?” she asks Ingrid. 

“Ingrid,” she replies. 

The woman nods. “Alright, Ingrid. I’m going to cut this cloth so we can wrap it and tie off the wound for now. I need you to keep pressure on the wound as I do this otherwise there’s a good chance he’ll bleed out.”

Ingrid bites the inside of her cheek but steels her nerves. “Got it.”

The green-haired woman unbuckles the strap holding the backpack around Sylvain and maneuvers his arms out of the strap. Sylvain’s brow twitches in discomfort, but his eyes don’t reopen and Ingrid keeps her hands pressed over the wound and the blanket. The woman kneeling with her sheds her jacket and holds it over Sylvain’s chest. She makes eye contact with Ingrid. 

“On three,” she says. “One, two, three!”

On the count, Ingrid yanks the blanket off Sylvain’s stomach and the woman replaces it with her coat. Ingrid quickly shifts her hands back to the coat, pressing it down firmly to keep pressure. The woman leans back, taking the blanket and smoothly slicing it into long strips using the weird sword she had had. The green-haired man moves, kneeling on the other side of Sylvain’s body and Ingrid watches as they pass the blanket between each other, starting to wrap it around Sylvain’s torso. 

Ingrid waits until they pull on the fabric, tightening it down over her hands to pull away, taking the woman’s coat with her. From there, it’s only a matter of seconds before they’re tying off the sheet in a tight wrap around Sylvain’s torso. Sylvain mutters something unintelligible and Ingrid frowns, brushing a bloodied hand across his forehead, pushing back some of his hair. 

She swallows and looks at the two strangers. “Will he be okay?”

“We have to get him to the Monastery,” the woman says. “We have a medic there that can look after him, but it’s imperative we get him back there.”

“Byleth!” a loud voice shouts and all three of them turn and see four men charging towards them. 

Two of the men are smaller and wielding bows–Ingrid marks them as the two that had shot from atop the ridge–but the other two are taller and bulkier. They jog straight over to where they’re clustered around Sylvain and the taller man kneels next to Seteth, noting Sylvain’s injured form. 

“I’ll take him,” the man says, looping an arm under Sylvain’s legs and shoulders. 

Ingrid stands up quickly as the man picks up Sylvain, frowning. “Wait!”

The woman rests a hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay. Dedue will get him back to the Monastery and our healer will help him.” She smiles sympathetically. “It’s Ingrid, right?”

Ingrid nods, but it feels like her ears are stuffed with cotton. “I need to,” she mumbles, trailing off, still staring after Sylvain. She feels numb in her fingers and her leg aches underneath her. 

The woman steps in front of Ingrid, cutting off her line of sight. “Hey, Ingrid, I need you to stay with me, okay?” Ingrid breathes out shakily. “My name is Byleth. You’ve made it to Garreg Mach. You’ll be okay.”

Ingrid nods again, slowly this time. “Sorry,” she says quietly. “It’s just been a long journey.”

The woman’s expression is understanding. She reminds Ingrid of Lambert: the kind of person who could lead you out of fire with their head held high. Her hand squeezes Ingrid’s shoulder. 

“Come on. Let’s follow them.”

She gently tugs on Ingrid’s shoulder, leading her forward. Ingrid steps, but her leg seizes and she stumbles, crying out. Byleth catches her when she trips, frowning. 

“Woah there. Are you alright?”

Ingrid exhales through her teeth. “I was shot almost 3 weeks ago,” she confesses. 

Byleth’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh fuck. Have you been treated?”

Marianne’s face flashes through Ingrid’s mind and the old, gnawing guilt rears in her stomach again. “Yes,” she murmured. “The only thing I need is time.”

Byleth shakes her head. “And not to be walking on your leg if it’s still healing.” She turns away, scanning over the figures who had lingered. Seteth, Dedue, and the other man, who Ingrid figures to have been Alois, have all disappeared up the road with Sylvain. “Ashe,” she calls, waving at one of the young archers who is looking over the body of the bloated Infected. 

The silver-haired man turns, noticing he’s being summoned. He jogs over, slinging his bow onto his back. Byleth pulls one of Ingrid’s arms up, over her shoulder. 

“Is this alright, Ingrid?”

“Yes.” She stares up the road. “Please, can we–” she trails off, her heart twisting.

Ashe, the young man, steps closer to her and Ingrid allows him to sling her arm over his shoulder as they hobble forward, moving up the road. Byleth seems to understand her urgency as she quickens their pace. Ingrid lets the weight she would have placed on her right leg rest on both Ashe and Byleth as they continue up the road. Somehow, none of the Infected in the forest around them are drawn out, so they walk undisturbed.

Ingrid can’t help but glance back at the awful, bloated Infected corpse. “What is that thing?” she asks. “I’ve never seen anything like it before.”

Byleth’s expression twists into a frown. “We call them Big Ones. They’re extremely rare. We think they develop from mutations to Clickers or Slashers where they exhibit traits from both. We’ve been tracking that one for a while, but that’s the first time it’s broken away from its hoard enough for us to take a shot at it.”

Ingrid bites her tongue. So it really had been just awful luck that had placed her and Sylvain in the path of the Big One. He had saved her at the cost of his own safety and it feels like someone has ripped her heart out of her chest. She stays silent after Byleth answers her question, focusing on limping steadily forward, following after the people who took Sylvain. 

Ingrid guesses that it takes about ten minutes before they break from the cover of the trees and Ingrid lays her eyes on the Garreg Mach Community for the first time. Crumbled, high stone walls guard a beautiful, ancient church and its grounds. Ingrid’s steps falter as she stares in shock. 

Byleth chuckles faintly at her disbelief. “Welcome to Garreg Mach.”

Ingrid’s eyes burn with tears again suddenly and she drops her arms off of Ashe and Byleth’s shoulders. “We made it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Edit 02/09/21: psst, if you want the director's cut version of _that scene_ , it's now posted on my nsfw pseud [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/29328012)


	6. act vi. finale

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A reunion and healing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is it. The end of the end. I can't believe it. I'll talk more at the end because I have a few things to ramble on about~

The Monastery, as Byleth describes it, is a fortress nestled into the mountains and surrounded by forests. The hoard that Ingrid and Sylvain had their run-in with passes through every once and a while, but, for the most part, the forests are safe for hunting and the area lends itself well to supporting a rather large Community.

Ashe disappears quickly once they enter the Monastery’s walls and Ingrid finds herself looking around, awed. In the fifty years since the beginning of the Infection, Garreg Mach’s structure has been remarkably conserved, especially in comparison to the decay in Fhirdiad. Byleth notices Ingrid’s wandering gaze and explains that since people don’t often have a reason to climb the mountains to Garreg Mach, the isolation of the area has assisted in its preservation. 

From the outside, the Monastery is beautiful. There are people milling about, but unlike in Fhirdiad, or in Failnaught, very few people are visibly armed. Ingrid spies the occasional bow, but there are no visible guns. It makes her feel out of place with her blood-stained hands, the handgun at her hip, and Sylvain’s rifle slung over her back. 

Ingrid steals a quick look around the area, noticing that people haven’t yet seemed to give them a second glance. 

Byleth gestures to the left side of the building. “Come with me,” she urges. “Let’s get you somewhere that you can clean up.”

Ingrid nods and limps along with Byleth as Byleth leads around the outside of the old monastery, past a small fishing pond and then up a flight of stairs towards what looks like a dormitory. Byleth walks slowly, making sure to keep an arm wrapped around Ingrid’s waist as she helps Ingrid hobble. They climb another flight of stairs, stopping in front of what looks like a large bathroom. 

Byleth holds the door open for Ingrid and waves her inside. Ingrid enters and looks around, twisting her hand in the hem of her jacket nervously. This place, while clearly old on the outside, has working lights and running water. Ingrid turns to stare at Byleth. 

“How is all of this possible?”

Byleth gives her a slight smile. “There was a refinery in the mountains a dozen miles from here and we were able to keep stocked up on enough oil and fuel to run generators. And, we have a whole roof of solar panels on the eastern side of the Monastery. It does the job.”

“Really?”

Byleth nods. “Have you ever had a hot shower, Ingrid?” The question sounds playful. 

Ingrid laughs faintly. “We had limited power at my previous Community,” she says. “We were patched into the power grid of the city so we had most of the necessities. I’ll admit though, I’ve only ever had lukewarm or cold showers.”

Surprise flickers across Byleth’s face. “Wait. Ingrid, did you come from Fhirdiad?”

Ingrid tenses. Her mind races. Byleth’s knowledge of Fhirdiad makes her uneasy. It could be from any number of sources–from raiders to traveler’s stories about the defeated Community–but she can’t help but hope it’s from other Fhirdiad survivors. She hasn’t forgotten about the tire tracks. “Are there others here?”

Byleth rubs a hand over her mouth, looking awed. “You walked from Fhirdiad. You and your friend.”

“Yes.”

Byleth shakes her head. “Well, that’s certainly a feat.” She waves past Ingrid towards a series of shower stalls. “Please, take all the time you want and get cleaned up. Anything in there is free for anyone to use, so go ahead. I’ll grab you a towel and a change of clothes.”

Ingrid can’t help but notice the way that Byleth avoided the question about Fhirdiad. It unsettles her. She wants to trust Byleth, she really does, but she also wants answers. As Byleth leaves, Ingrid leans against one of the sinks, relieving the weight on her bad leg, and sighs. 

“Don’t get your hopes up,” she mutters to herself. She has no reason to believe that Dimitri and Felix’s bus or that anyone at all from Fhirdiad made it here. 

Ingrid turns and studies her face in the reflection of the grimy mirror mounted over the sink. She has blood on her face: a smudge where Sylvain had touched her before he had passed out. A lump swells in her throat at the thought of him and she can’t stop herself from picturing the way he had looked sprawled out on the ground, bleeding out. 

Byleth had said he would be taken straight to one of their medics, but Ingrid doesn’t know what to believe. She is more than a little wary of the people of Garreg Mach, but she can’t deny that they have already been incredibly welcoming and generous: offering her clean clothes and a warm shower. Arguably, she should trust them more than she trusted the people of Failnaught, but the thought of more raiders, especially those even slightly connected to Miklan, sets her on edge. 

Ingrid clenches her hands; the dried blood on her hands makes the motion stiff and almost sticky. Her stomach turns. She doesn’t want to be covered in Sylvain’s blood. 

Ingrid hurries into one of the shower stalls, turning the water on. She leans forward and washes most of the blood off her hands. Then she strips, dropping her filthy clothes into a pile on the bench in the stall out of the water’s spray. She steps under the water and tilts her head back, closing her eyes and letting warm water run over her body. 

The water is cast off in various shades of pink and brown as she scrubs away mud and blood. Some of the stubborn spots don’t come off without soap, so she squeezes a generous amount into one hand before setting about rubbing it all over her body. The soap in the stall is nothing special, but it is soap and Ingrid scrubs every inch of her skin clean. She hesitates as she rubs along her arms and hands, suddenly thinking of Sylvain and their night in the cabin. 

She needs him to be okay. This _thing_ is still all twisted up and unsettled. He can’t not be around to deal with that mess. She wants to see him smile again–to hear his laugh and feel his arm over her shoulder. 

_She wants him to touch her again_ , she realizes. _She wants Sylvain_. 

Her eyes burn and _not_ from the shower’s searing steam. Frowning, she scrubs at her cheeks until they sting and her tears blend into the water rolling over her face. 

She hears the door to the bathroom open and footsteps click across the old tile floor. “Ingrid?” Byleth calls out. “I’ve hung a towel and some clothes on a hook outside the door,” Byleth continues, raising her voice to be heard over the shower. “I had to guess on your size so they might be a little big, but I hope they fit.”

Byleth’s shoes click across the floor as she retreats. Ingrid listens for the door to shut again before turning off the water and stepping out of the stall. Dripping water onto the floor, she reaches beyond the curtain, pulling the towel and clean clothes into the stall with her. She dresses quickly and is grateful for the feel of clean clothes against her skin. Byleth’s guess had been spot-on for the pants, but the shirt is a bit big, so Ingrid knots it in the corner, tucking it into the hem of the cargo pants. 

Her new clothes are much cleaner than the muddy, well-worn garments she had arrived in, but a stubborn sentimentality grips her. She pauses, looking at her old clothes. She doesn’t need to, but she pulls Glenn’s jacket back on anyway. 

She steps out of the stall, rubbing the towel through her hair and stops short, staring at the figure just inside the doorway. Felix stands in front of her, staring like he has just seen a ghost. The blood drains out of her face so quickly she almost gets lightheaded. If she thinks Felix is pale, he must think her translucent as her mouth drops open. Ingrid’s head spins.

_He is alive_. 

He’s wearing a different jacket and his hair is shorter but still pulled back. Ingrid feels like she is about to cry all over again. She lowers the towel and gapes at him from across the room. 

“Felix?”

He strides towards her without saying anything. His arms reach out to pull her into a fierce hug and Ingrid lets the towel drop to the ground where it lands over her feet so that she can grab at him in return. She laughs in quiet disbelief as she clings to him, now quite sure that he is real. She pulls away after a moment, smiling through tears, lightly touching his face. 

“You’re here,” she says. 

“Yeah,” Felix mutters, still looking both confused and surprised. “We’ve been here for three weeks. Byleth told me that she had just rescued someone from Fhirdiad and I didn’t want to hope, but she described you and–” he trails off, his jaw tightening. 

Ingrid nods. She knows the feeling. She hugs Felix again. Into his shoulder, she murmurs: “You never came back to the Community. Weren’t you supposed to come back?”

Felix pushes on her shoulder until she steps back enough that they can see each other’s faces. “We made a hard choice to keep heading this way instead of turning back. It–” he pauses, swallowing roughly–“was Dimitri’s decision.”

Ingrid frowns. Felix doesn’t sound pleased, but she feels like he should since it sounds like both he and Dimitri have made it to Garreg Mach. “Dimitri is here too?”

Felix nods slowly. “He’s around somewhere, but, Ingrid–” His expression flattens and she sees the flash of grief through his eyes. Her heart sinks. _Someone is dead_. Dimitri may be alive, but someone else is dead. 

“Who did you lose?”

“Rowan,” he says immediately. Ingrid’s chest tightens and she steps further away from Felix until she leans against the bathroom wall. 

She had lost both of her parents when she had been young, so she had been raised by her brothers Rowan and Julian as well as Felix’s father, Rodrigue. Four years ago, Julian had died on a Hunter’s mission that had gone wrong, leaving just Ingrid and Rowan. She had relied on her brother for so much and to know that he is dead– _just like Glenn_ –is absolutely crushing. She had been hoping, in the same way she had prayed Dimitri and Felix were alive, that Rowan would be here at Garreg Mach to greet her too. 

She inhales sharply, pressing her hands against her cheeks in an attempt to ward off tears. Her whole upper body seizes with shaky breaths as she tries to control her emotions. Felix’s hand twitches towards her, but he looks uncomfortable. 

Ingrid quickly realizes that the list does not stop at Rowan. “Who else?” she asks, voice wavering. 

Felix’s eyes drop. “My dad.”

Ingrid closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I’m sorry, Fe.” The burning desire to cry bubbles up again, stronger this time. 

“I’m sorry you had to come all this way to hear that your brother died,” he mumbles. 

There’s a long, heavy pause between them that seems to stretch on. Ingrid wraps her arms around herself, fidgeting with the knick in the cuff of Glenn’s jacket. 

Felix fixates on the action, seeming to recognize the jacket. His jaw tightens. “How did you get here?”

“We walked. Mostly,” she explains. “Stopped in Failnaught and we heard that people from Fhirdiad had passed through so we thought we were on the right track.”

She watches his chest rise a bit and his amber eyes get lighter, as if he’s hopeful. She realizes too late what he is thinking, almost nauseous as her stomach turns in a wave of dread. 

“Who is _we_ , Ingrid? Is Glenn with you?”

Her hands drop back to her sides and her voice dies in her throat. How was she supposed to tell him that his brother was dead? Felix had done it so easily with Rowan. She wishes she could just rip off the bandage and spit it out, but she chokes on the words. Felix seems to read her answer in the silence. He clams up again, his expression tightening back to forced indifference. 

“Stupid question,” he mutters. “Sorry.”

She steps towards him, snatching his wrist before he can stubbornly cross his arms. “Felix, don’t do that. Don’t shut me out.”

His scowl deepens. “Do you have answers then?”

Guilt swirls through her as she nods slowly. Somehow, the words come to her this time, but it still feels like pulling teeth. “Glenn died in Fhirdiad, Felix. He didn’t even make it out of the Community.”

Hurt flashes deep in his eyes and Ingrid knows that Felix will need time to process, especially since he has apparently already lost his father. Then, unexpectedly, Felix tenses, his eyes narrowing. 

“Sylvain,” he says shortly. “You were with Sylvain in Fhirdiad. Where is he?”

“Byleth said they were taking him to the Infirmary,” Ingrid explains. “We were attacked by the hoard on the way up to the Monastery.” Her voice trembles. She can still hear the ominous clicks of the Big One. 

“Did he get bit?” Felix is deathly serious now. This is no longer an issue of his friend being present: it’s an issue of whether or not Sylvain is about to become a danger to all of the people inside Garreg Mach. 

Ingrid shakes her head quickly. “No. Not that we saw. Just–” she trails off, unwilling to finish the sentence. 

The door behind them creaks open and both Ingrid and Felix turn to see Byleth and a young man with dark green hair standing in the doorway. 

“I don’t mean to interrupt your reunion,” Byleth starts, “but you probably should have your leg looked at, Ingrid.”

Felix frowns, looking her up and down for physical injuries. Ingrid shifts her weight, avoiding his eyes. “What happened?”

“Don’t freak out,” Ingrid says as Byleth and the man approach. Felix’s eyes narrow. “I was shot,” she admits quickly. 

Ingrid might have laughed at the slapped, surprised look on Felix’s face if the conversation hadn’t been so serious in tone. 

“What?” he demands. 

Ingrid shakes her head, holding up a hand as he leans forward. “It was over three weeks ago and I’ve had it checked out.” She directs the second half of the sentence to Byleth and the newcomer. 

Byleth crosses her arms and tilts her head, giving Ingrid a curious look with a cocked eyebrow. “If you’re sure.” 

Ingrid nods. She looks between Felix and Byleth. “I wouldn’t say no to sitting down somewhere though.”

“There’s food in the Dining Hall,” Byleth suggests. “I’m going to go check on Mercedes and your friend. I’ll send someone to find you if there are any updates.”

The man with Byleth yawns. “I suppose since I’m not needed here I can make myself useful in the Infirmary.” 

“That would be appreciated, Linhardt.”

Byleth nods one last time to both Felix and Ingrid and then she disappears out of the room with the green-haired man, leaving Felix and Ingrid in the bathroom. Ingrid shivers as water drips off her hair, rolling down her back. Its warmth has faded. 

“Can you walk there alright?” Felix asks. 

Ingrid crosses her arms. “I’ve managed this far, haven’t I?”

* * *

In the Dining Hall, Felix waves her away to grab a seat and he disappears to the front of the room. The hall isn’t too busy, so Ingrid finds an empty spot on a bench about midway down one of the long tables. She winces as she lifts her foot up, awkwardly swinging her bad leg over the bench. Her fingers drum over the table’s surface as she watches him speak with a petite, red-haired woman who passes him two trays of food. Felix redirects towards her and Ingrid gives him a weak smile as he places the trays down, sliding onto the bench across from her. 

Ingrid’s mouth waters as she looks at the fresh meal in front of her with steamed veggies and what looks like grilled pheasant. She pokes at it with her fork before looking at the second tray, waiting for Felix to eat. He doesn’t, settling for staring at her. 

When she doesn’t eat, he frowns. “What?”

She nods to the tray in front of him. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

He scoffs. “Ingrid, they’re both for you.” She flushes, but he doesn’t seem to care. “You’ve been on the road for how long? You deserve to eat a real meal.”

Slowly, Ingrid takes a bite of the vegetables. It is, quite possibly, the best thing she has ever eaten in her whole life. Felix waits until she has devoured half of the plate in front of her before he coughs quietly and Ingrid puts the fork down. He obviously wants to talk, but she has no idea where to start. 

She settles on the evacuation. 

“It was the Sons of Gautier,” she says before he can say anything. “They were in the Hunter group on our bus. Sylvain overheard them talking about messing with him when we were evacuating and we wanted to get as far away as we could. We left that first night, once the group stopped to rest, but we must have stopped just in the way of a hoard’s migration path because Infected attacked the camp as we were leaving.”

“Fuck,” Felix mutters. “Sons of Gautier? In the Hunters?”

Ingrid nods. “We got lucky to get away when we did.”

“Then what?”

She tells him the rest of it: their arrival back in Fhirdiad, how no one else came back, and then about the mall and the Sons of Gautier. Felix’s hands clench hard enough that his knuckles whiten as she explains the situation with Miklan and how she was shot. He looks like he’s tempted to get up and march across the country just to throttle Sylvain’s brother with his own two hands. 

She chokes up when she gets to the part about Failnaught. It still hurts to think about all that pain and death. She covers her face with her hands as she explains the hoard and the Raiders and everything that Claude and the others had sacrificed for her and Sylvain. How it’s very likely that none of them had gotten away. 

Felix doesn’t say anything for a minute, but then Ingrid feels him touch her wrist as he carefully pulls one of her hands down and gives it a light squeeze. “Ingrid, it’s okay,” he mutters. “You made it. Sylvain made it.” His voice twists a bit at the end of the statement and Ingrid feels ill. They can try to claim that they’re safe here, but she won’t feel relieved until she hears news about Sylvain. And their safety does nothing to soothe the accumulated guilt that sickens her stomach.

“So many people have died for us, Felix.” She tightens her grip on his hand. “Back at the Community, Glenn gave me his stuff.” She twists her hand, showing off the knick in the jacket cuff that Felix himself had made. “We should have done more for him.”

Felix goes quiet before shaking his head. “Ingrid, I know my brother. If he gave you his shit, he was done. He would have known that.” He drops her hand and taps his fingers against the tabletop, considering something. “We stopped to make camp after a few days and people wanted to go back. We voted and it ended in a tie. Dad said it should be Dimitri’s decision whether we kept going or went back.” His jaw sets and there’s something hard and bitter in his gaze for just a moment. “Ingrid, you didn’t see Dimitri like I did. There was something _off_ about him.” 

She leans forward, frowning. “What?”

“It was like whatever happened in Fhirdiad _broke_ him.” He pauses. “We kept heading this way and after another few days, our bus ran into trouble with a hoard on the road. Dad and some of the Hunters, Rowan included, tried to get them to move, but–” He cuts himself off, scowling. 

“Felix,” Ingrid breathes, grazing her fingers against his in a feeble attempt at comfort. She can make a guess at where this story goes. 

“Dimitri got his shit together after that and we managed to get everyone up here. We’ve been good since.” He looks up, making eye contact with her, and Ingrid braces for a question that she isn’t sure she has the answer to. “I can’t believe you came all this way with Sylvain and you _didn’t_ chop his hand off.”

It’s not the question she had expected. She thought he would ask about Sylvain and about _Sylvain and her._ She blinks but then his words catch up with her and Ingrid can’t stop herself from huffing at the dryness of Felix’s remark. _Of course,_ her mind then cuts to the way that Sylvain had laid his hands on her in the cabin. She abruptly stops smiling. She wants to joke back to him, but she’s too worried for it to actually land without being incredibly flat. 

Felix studies her. “Will he be okay?”

Ingrid studies her hands. Even after scrubbing them vigorously, her nails are still pink with Sylvain’s blood. Her palms are clean, but when she looks at them, she can still picture the way that the blood had clung to her skin, fixing in the lines of her palms. 

“I don’t know,” she admits. “Depends on how good the medics here are.” She closes her eyes, taking a deep breath. 

As she sits with Felix now, something heavy and guilty and distinctly _Glenn-shaped_ presses against her stomach. Felix is Glenn’s brother. Since she can’t explain anything to Glenn, a part of her feels like she owes it to Felix. Ingrid herself still doesn’t know the extent of her feelings for Sylvain or even what he feels for her–it’s still all muddled up and twisted in blankets back at the cabin–but Felix knows both her and Sylvain better than anyone else. 

“Felix,” she begins.

He shakes his head. “You don’t have to explain it to me.”

She bites the inside of her cheek. “What?”

“I knew about you and Glenn.” He huffs out a breath. “Knew that things were getting weird and complicated between you and him. I know what you told Sylvain before all of this went to shit.”

The guilt recedes a bit. “Oh.”

“Honestly, I never understood you and him,” Felix continues. “It always felt like you were too much for him. Too _Ingrid_.” She bristles, but he waves it off. “It’s not a bad thing. I just didn’t think that you fit.”

“Oh,” she repeats slowly. 

“Felix!” 

A voice carries from the other side of the Dining Hall and both Felix and Ingrid stiffen. Ingrid looks towards the direction of the shout and sees the towering figure of Dimitri staring towards both of them, looking worried, relieved, and shocked all at the same time. She stands, unsteadily, as Dimitri hurries towards her, but she doesn’t have enough time to brace herself before Dimitri barrels into her, sweeping her into a heavy hug, practically toppling her down against the bench she had been sitting on. 

Ingrid laughs and pats his back until Dimitri sets her back down on her feet. She steadies herself on the table and studies him: he looks different–longer hair, something heavy in his shoulders–but he is still smiling the Dimitri smile she knows so well. His hand stays on her shoulder, steady and warm.

“It’s good to see you,” he says. Ingrid nods, but before she can reply, he stiffens and looks between her and Felix. “Byleth sent me.”

Ingrid’s eyebrows shoot up and her stomach twists. “What?”

“He’s going to make it.”

* * *

_The last time he can remember being in this much pain was when he was stabbed_ , Sylvain thinks as his consciousness begins to creep in. His whole stomach feels like it’s burning. It’s like someone is trying to tear his ribs right out of his chest. He keeps his eyes shut as he breathes slowly and shallowly, trying to manage the pain. 

Gradually, he begins to see the pinks of the insides of his eyelids. Sylvain wiggles the toes of his left foot and then his right before moving onto his fingers. His left hand twitches without issue, but his right hand is being held still by something warm, no matter how hard he tries. The warm grip tightens for a moment. _Someone is holding his hand._

His eyelids are the heaviest they’ve ever been, but after a few failed attempts, he manages to force his eyes to open. At first, there is just a halo of white light around him. He has to blink–once, twice, three times–before the light starts to dim and he can make out blurry figures. There are two people standing to his right, one much taller than the other, and someone else sitting in a chair in front of them. 

His eyes train on the taller figure first and he sees shaggy blonde hair, blue eyes, and broad, familiar shoulders. It takes a second for his brain to connect that it’s Dimitri. _Dimitri is alive._ Sylvain gapes, blinking rapidly like the people in front of him might just disappear if he looks away. 

Hurriedly, he looks to the other standing figure. _Felix_. Felix is right there, arms crossed and wearing a brooding expression, as always. But he is alive and he is here and _holy fuck they’re both alive._

The grip on his hand tightens and Sylvain’s gaze flicks down, finally landing on Ingrid. Her lips are parted in surprise and her eyebrows are raised. Her green eyes are wide enough that he can see the thistle-grey fibres close to her pupils under the light of the room they’re in. Something about her is different though–the stubborn streak of dirt on her cheek that had been there during their last day of travel is gone. Her hair, too, looks a little more evenly trimmed and it’s even pinned back from her face now. 

He doesn’t mean to stare, really, but his eyes lock on Ingrid’s face–her beautiful, surprised, and very _alive_ face–and then nothing else matters. 

She’s staring at him too, holding his gaze with an intensity that reminds him of firelight and frustrations and the explosion of a lifetime’s worth of passion and tension. Her mouth closes as he stares, her lips pressing together. Her shoulders straighten and he wonders if the hollows of her cheekbones have filled in as well. 

If they have, then that means he’s been here for a while. Where _here_ is, anyway. 

Sylvain blinks, still holding Ingrid’s gaze, and watches as her lips finally curve into a relieved, beautiful, and breathless smile. 

“Hi,” he croaks hoarsely. His voice is scratchy in his throat from disuse. He forces his eyes up to look at Dimitri and then at Felix. “Been a while.”

“Shut up,” Felix snaps, folding his arms over his chest. There is no real malice behind his words. 

Dimitri shows none of Felix’s snark as he simply gives Sylvain a relieved smile. Sylvain can’t help but fixate on his friend’s longer hair. It’s different–longer and shaggier, but pulled back out of his face. It’s a good look for him. It’s a bit less boyish and more distinguished, like something Dimitri’s father would have had. Dimitri seems older somehow too, as if the month and a bit that they had been separated had aged him almost five years. Weirdly, it’s as if Dimitri has taken every piece of advice that Sylvain had ever tried to give him about attracting girls and implemented it all at once. 

Sylvain wiggles his fingers in Ingrid’s grip, adjusting until he can properly squeeze her hand back, still looking rapidly between Dimitri and Felix. 

“Been a while, Sylvain,” Dimitri echoes softly. “You gave us a hell of a scare.”

Sylvain frowns and then he looks down at his chest. His jacket and shirt are both gone. There are clean, white bandages wrapped tightly around his chest. It tingles and aches when he breathes. 

“Ah,” he mutters dumbly. 

Felix shakes his head. “Now you know not to try and sneak past a Big One.”

Sylvain laughs and then winces when his chest throbs with the action. Ingrid frowns, but before he or any of his friends can say anything, an unfamiliar voice cuts in. 

“Alright, he’s awake and you’ve all had your chats. Now it’s my turn to check his injuries.”

Sylvain watches as a young woman with fair hair in a simple bob rounds the bed, narrows her pale blue eyes at Dimitri, Felix, and Ingrid. Dimitri is the first to step away, smiling apologetically. Felix lingers a half-second longer, but then he steps back too. 

“Sorry, Mercedes,” Dimitri says. “We didn’t mean to get in your way.”

Sylvain studies the woman. From what she and the others have said, Sylvain guesses that she’s a medic, possibly the one who treated him in the first place. She’s very pretty, but in a very different way from how Ingrid is beautiful. His mouth starts running before he can stop himself. 

“Mercedes? Sounds like the name of an angel,” he says, flirting before he’s fully aware that he’s doing it. 

Mercedes raises an eyebrow at him. Sylvain’s lips twitch into an amused smile, recognizing her simple dismissiveness. He can already tell that she’s not going to take any of his shit, but that quality tells him that she might make a good friend when he’s not actively her patient or whatever. 

Sylvain’s mistake catches up to him almost immediately as the warmth curling around his hand loosens and disappears. Ingrid retracts her hand into her lap and Sylvain kicks himself. He looks at her just in time to see the barest hint of hurt in her expression and he kicks himself even harder. This cannot be a good look for him: sleep with Ingrid, protect Ingrid, and then immediately flirt with a pretty medic as soon as he wakes up. 

“Ingrid,” he starts, but she forces a smile and shakes her head. 

“I’m glad you’re okay, Sylvain.” She stands up. “I’ll get out of your way, Mercedes.” Her tone is curt and it stings when she moves away from him. 

Sylvain’s hand feels ice cold. She’s only a step away from him but Sylvain already feels lonely. Aside from small stretches of time in Failnaught and their stupid split-up at the mall, Sylvain has been right there with Ingrid for almost every moment since the Community fell. He doesn’t want to lose that. He wants to pull her back and hold her and listen to the beat of her heart, but instead, he’s forced to watch from the bed like an infirm as she strides out of the room, leaving him with Mercedes. 

Sylvain sighs and stares after Ingrid as if he is capable of summoning her back with just his gaze. When it’s clear that Ingrid is not coming back, he looks over at Mercedes. Sylvain realizes, very belatedly, as he watches her adjust some medical supplies on a rolling cart, that he has no idea where he is. Since Dimitri and Felix are here–and Ingrid is safe–he hopes that they are at Garreg Mach. 

“Where am I?” he asks. 

She looks over at him, her expression gentle. “The Infirmary at Garreg Mach. You and Ingrid came an awfully long way with just the two of you, but you made it here and you’ll be safe here.”

Sylvain lifts his left hand and rubs it through his hair, mussing it as he thinks. “That’s a strange thing to remember after all this time. Safety and stability. Even in Fhirdiad it was just evacuation plan after evacuation plan.”

Mercedes nods. “Well, we’re trying not to focus on the bad parts. The Garreg Mach Community has been one of the largest, most stable Communities since the Infection began.”

Sylvain frowns. “Really? Not even a single leadership struggle?” He’s honestly still reeling from the aftershocks of his own brother’s attempted insurrection in Fhirdiad, so it feels improbable, if not impossible that everything at Garreg Mach is so cut and dry. 

Mercedes shrugs and leans towards him. Sylvain relaxes into the cot and lets her carefully cut away the bandages over his chest so that she can check the injury. The wound is nasty and larger than he had been expecting. It cuts down across his stomach, almost right over his naval, and stops just above the line of his hips. The skin is raised and pink around the injury itself and Sylvain can see the faint, partially-translucent white threads sewing his skin cut. As large as the injury is, it looks clean, half-healed, and uninfected: all of which are good signs. 

“There was a woman named Rhea who started the Community. When she stepped down, a man named Jeralt took her place,” Mercedes explains. “Jeralt was lovely, but he died a few years ago and his daughter, Byleth, replaced him. She takes good care of us.” 

“Huh,” Sylvain mumbles. 

Mercedes dabs the edge of his wound with something that makes it burn and Sylvain winces, gritting his teeth. She pauses, giving him a sympathetic smile. He waves for her to continue and she carefully continues cleaning the edges of the wound, lightly touching over where the stitches lie. 

“How long have I been here?” he asks. 

Mercedes hums under her breath, considering the question. “Four days? You were out cold for almost all of it which helped you heal, but your friends have been by to see you every day.”

Sylvain nods and rubs his face. “Right.”

Four days isn’t that long, but when he thinks about how long the last month has felt, it is dizzying. He has only been out half as long as Ingrid had been when they were in Failnaught, but those eight days were the longest days of Sylvain’s life. He doesn’t know what to say to Mercedes, who seems like a genuinely lovely person. Sylvain has always prided himself on his ability to connect with people, but it feels as if the last month has completely destroyed his social charms. It has also been more than a month since he has truly been able to let his guard down around anyone except Ingrid. And, since Ingrid isn’t here, Sylvain can’t help but feel stilted. 

He swallows back his doubt and gives her a lighter smile. “So, Doc, what’s the diagnosis? Am I free to go?” The joke feels forced. 

She frowns and drops the gauze she had been using into a trashcan. “Absolutely not. You still have a lot of healing and recovery ahead of you. You’ll be here for a minimum of three more days and even then you will not be doing anything remotely strenuous or you’ll end up right back here. I think you’ll find I will not be nearly as nice the second time around.” 

The sudden strictness of her voice makes him blink. “Oh,” he says.

Mercedes continues with her check-up before getting him comfortably situated in the bed. “I have to go take care of a few other things now,” she explains as she steps away from him. Her eyes narrow and she points a finger at him, scolding. “Don’t go anywhere or you _will_ tear your stitches.”

Sylvain chuckles as she leaves the room, relaxing back into the pillows. His stomach throbs even from that movement so he resigns himself to lying in the bed. Alone. 

He’s never really been _alone_. It’s weird–the silence is different from the quiet of Ingrid’s breathing while she sleeps–and it’s kind of boring. This boredom is new, Sylvain realizes, staring at the ceiling. Even back in the Community, his worst injury (courtesy of his brother’s goons) had resulted in three days of bedrest but he had been bothered non-stop by his friends. Garreg Mach’s Infirmary is deathly silent and boring in comparison. 

Sylvain isn’t sure what to think of the fact that neither Dimitri nor Felix nor Ingrid come back to see him for the rest of the day. 

He ends up dozing off, somehow still tired, but he wakes up to a knock on the door. He shifts, twisting to see who his visitor is. His hopes that it might be Ingrid are dashed when he sees an unfamiliar woman with light green hair. 

Her hands are behind her back as she smiles at him from the doorway, obviously trying to be disarming. Sylvain adjusts, shifting against the cot until he’s in a semi-upright position where he’s not jostling himself too much. 

“Hi,” he greets. 

“You’re Sylvain, right?” she asks. “I’m Byleth. I’m the leader of the Garreg Mach Community.”

Sylvain waves a hand to the chair next to his bed. “Mercedes told me about you. It’s nice to meet you.” 

She takes his invitation with a smile, settling into the chair next to his bed. For a moment, she doesn’t say anything as she studies him. Her green eyes are sharp, but lighter in colour than Ingrid’s are. Her hair is pulled back in a loose ponytail and she looks remarkably young to be the leader of a whole group of survivors. 

“You sure took a beating to get all the way here to us,” Byleth says finally, breaking the silence.

Sylvain half-shrugs. “I guess. Wasn’t really the intention. I’ve never faced anything like that Infected.”

Byleth nods to him, her eyes flicking down to his covered chest as if she could see through his shirt. “We call them the Big Ones. You were very unlucky to run into that one when you did.” She flattens her hands on her legs and tilts her head. “But, that’s dealt with and you’re here. I’m sure you must have questions.” 

“Yeah,” Sylvain mumbles. “So, Garreg Mach? This is it?”

Byleth smiles. “Yeah. It’s the remains of an old monastery that we repurposed into a Community. It’s been very good to us. I’ll answer your questions as best I can, if you would like.”

Sylvain opens his mouth to ask her about Dimitri and Felix but is cut off by the rumbling of his stomach. He tenses, his ears flushing hot, and awkwardly drops eye contact. “Uh, sorry. It’s been a minute.”

Byleth chuckles. “You know what? How about I go grab us some food and when I get back, I can tell you all about the Community.”

Sylvain ruffles his own hair, giving her a sheepish smile. “Sure.” 

He wants to ask her to send his friends back up, but she darts out of the room before he can form the words in his mouth. He sighs heavily and tilts his head back, squinting at the ceiling. His friends, Ingrid especially, deserve space so he’ll have to let them come to him, since it’s not like he can go anywhere. 

Byleth comes back surprisingly quickly, balancing two cafeteria trays of food. Sylvain’s mouth waters at the smell and he digs into it ravenously. If his manners are offensive in any way, the Garreg Mach Community Leader says nothing as she hungrily eats the food on her own plate. Once they’ve both finished, Byleth balances her napkin on her leg and draws a shakily sketched map and passes it to him. 

Sylvain studies it for a little while, noting the points that she labelled and the darker lines around the outside of the block-shaped buildings that indicate the stone walls. “Wow. This is pretty amazing.”

Byleth smiles, brushing a piece of hair behind her ear in a motion that gives Sylvain pause: it’s one of the same ticks that Ingrid has. He hastily drops his eyes back to the map, exhaling slowly and trying to let thoughts of Ingrid subside for even one moment. 

“We’ve done a lot to protect this place, but, like I said, it protects us too. Hopefully you and Ingrid will be happy to join us here.”

Sylvain rubs one corner of the map where a series of boxy buildings remind him of a weird, half-coloured chessboard. One of the markings is labelled as a tower. “Rook to A4,” he says jokingly, drawing a line out from the tower. 

Byleth raises an eyebrow. “Do you play chess?”

He blinks. “Uh, I guess I do. I haven’t played in ages. There was barely anyone to play back in Fhirdiad.” He pauses, remembering that he would often play Dimitri when his friend humoured him. “I guess, actually, there was no real competition back in Fhirdiad.”

The statement sparks something in Byleth’s gaze as her smile widens. “Well, next time I come by, or when you’re out of the Infirmary, we’ll have to play.”

“As long as I get white,” he replies immediately. 

She rolls her eyes. “We’ll flip for it.”

He creases the napkin map, holding it over his lap. “Thank you for this,” he says. 

She smiles. “Of course. I’d heard a lot about you from Felix and Dimitri. I wish we didn’t have to be in the Infirmary, but we’re just happy to know that you made it to us in the end.” She stands up, glancing past him to the window. The glowing orange light tells him that it’s probably well into sunset. “I should let you rest,” Byleth continues. 

“And I guess I should let you get back to your leader duties.”

She scoffs. “Yeah, yeah.” She stands up. “It was nice to meet you, Sylvain.” 

With that, she leaves him alone in the Infirmary. Sylvain hums to himself as he lets his eyes close, tilting his head from side to side to stretch his neck. She seems smart and polite and funny. He enjoyed talking to her, but once she leaves, he starts missing his favourite green-eyed girl.

Sylvain’s hands itch atop the blankets. He has been with her so closely and so reliantly for so long, that he has forgotten what it’s like to be without her. With his eyes closed and body reclined on the Infirmary cot, he wishes Ingrid would hold his hand again.

* * *

He is lying awake on his cot staring at the ceiling when the door creaks open. Sylvain startles, pushing himself up on one elbow to look to the other side of the room. Moonlight glows through the room, painting a silhouette in the doorway. Ingrid hesitates before stepping towards him, out of the shadows. Her hair glows silvery in the moonlight, but her shoulders are rounded and she looks timid and tired. She’s also frowning. 

Sylvain softens, smiling. “Hey,” he greets. 

She stops her approach a step away from him and Sylvain can’t help but admire how lovely she looks. He wants to brush away He settles back against the bed and holds out his hand. That seems to be enough to get her to cautiously approach. It’s almost as if he is working with a skittish animal. 

“Hi,” Ingrid replies finally as she curls her hand loosely into his. 

“Kept my promise,” Sylvain says. 

Ingrid bites her lip. “You almost didn’t,” she mumbles. “There was a lot of blood, Sylvain.”

It takes him a second to realize that she’s talking about him living whereas he had been thinking about the promise that he had made to Glenn back in Fhirdiad about getting her safely to Garreg Mach. 

“Ingrid.”

Her grip loosens on his hand and she inhales sharply, looking away. “I don’t want the break-up line from a guy I was never dating, Sylvain.” The words sound stilted and rehearsed. 

He frowns. “What?”

“Circumstance. We were victims of circumstance,” Ingrid continues, still refusing to look at him. “I know it’s stupid and Glenn’s been gone for less than two months and I don’t even think that I miss him like I should. Felix just found out and he’s a mess. God, Even Dimitri is more upset than I was–” she frowns “–am.” The hand that is not holding his rubs her temples and she sighs again. “Rowan is dead and you’re not looking at me and I don’t know how to do anything except keep coming back to you,” she confesses hurriedly. 

Sylvain’s head spins with the information that she dumps on him suddenly. “Wait, Ingrid, your brother died?” he questions, fixating on that crucial bit of information. 

Her eyes close and she nods slowly. “He and Felix’s dad and a bunch of other Hunters died getting the rest of them here to Garreg Mach.” She shakes her head. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Sylvain. What we’re doing.”

“You’re surviving,” he replies immediately. Confidence in one’s own survival and the purpose of it is one of the first and most important lessons that they learn as Hunters. Giving up isn’t an option and doubt is the first step towards surrender. He tactfully ignores the second thing she says, worrying for a moment that she might actually be here to reject him. 

Ingrid’s eyes finally meet his and Sylvain lifts her hand, pulling it up to his lips, just holding it there. 

“Sylvain,” she repeats, quieter and almost pained. 

“I didn’t care if there wasn’t even anything at the top of this mountain,” Sylvain murmurs. “I didn’t care as long as you were safe.” He presses his lips lightly onto the knuckle of her thumb. “I didn’t care if we were going to walk out onto a flat section of land because we’d come so far. The only thing that I care about was that we had somewhere to keep moving towards.”

“And what was I supposed to do, Sylvain, if you have been bit back there? If there hadn’t been a Community here and you were going to Turn?”

“You would shoot me and keep going,” he says, but he doesn’t believe his own words. It’s a bitter echo to their shared night in the cabin. In a month and a half, Sylvain has come to know that he would uproot the entire world for Ingrid. The way that she looks at him–eyelashes lowered, green eyes burning, body tilted towards him–makes him wonder if she might do the same. The normalcy they’ve both been struggling to cling to since that night is slipping away and Sylvain doesn’t want to hold onto it anymore. 

“And if I had been the one to Turn?”

“We would have gone down in fabulous style,” he murmurs, still holding her hand. 

Her expression tightens. “Sylvain, you can’t keep doing that.”

“I got you here safely. That’s what mattered to me, Ingrid. It was never about me.”

“It was for me.” She raises her voice only a bit, but it is enough to give Sylvain pause. Hope prickles in his stomach. 

“It was?”

The look she gives him is one of utter disbelief. She pulls her hand back and Sylvain’s fingers remain outstretched for a half-second before he slowly curls them into a fist, dropping his hand back down to the blanket. Ingrid looks away from him and her shoulders hunch as she casts her gaze to the side, curling her arms around herself defensively. Sylvain pushes himself up onto his elbows, ignoring the burning pulse in his stomach as he moves. 

“Ingrid,” he presses. 

“I’m confused!” she exclaims finally. There is guilt tattooed across her face as she turns back to him and her voice is sharp with frustration. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to think, Sylvain! You can’t bring me to bed like that and–” her voice catches in her throat and a tear rolls down over her cheek “–act like nothing has happened.” 

A disbelieving chuckle bubbles up in Sylvain. “Ingrid, where did you get the impression that I was trying to act like nothing has happened?”

She tenses and her eyebrows furrow. Her green eyes are glassy with tears. “What?” 

He shakes his head. “I didn’t do any of that stuff because you were just _there_ , Ingrid. I did it because I wanted to do it. Because I wanted to do it with you.” He holds out a hand to her. “No break up lines.”

Ingrid suddenly looks afraid. “What?” she repeats, her voice small. 

Sylvain pushes on. “Maybe you don’t want to hear this, but, Ingrid, _god_ , I love you. And I have for a while.”

Her lips part as she stares at him, processing. “What?” she says for a third time. Her voice breaks into an almost-squeak. 

Sylvain sits up. He leans towards her and ignores the pain in his gut. “I love you,” he repeats. “I was never going to do anything about it because of Glenn and how messy everything got, but we’re alive and we made it and I don’t want to keep it to myself anymore.”

Ingrid leans into him so quickly that she almost bashes their foreheads together as presses her lips against his. Sylvain falls back into the bed, cupping a hand around the back of her head to keep their lips pressed together as he pulls her down after him. Ingrid hesitates, her lips stilling against his, but Sylvain hums and pulls on her arm and then her hip until she _finally_ gets the message and carefully crawls up on the cot next to him. 

Sylvain’s hand slides down to her thigh and pulls her leg over him, urging her on top. Ingrid stops, pulling back. Her lips are puffy and her eyes are wide and she is absolutely radiant in the room’s faint, natural glow. 

“You weren’t going to do anything,” she echoes. “But you love me.”

Sylvain smiles at her. “I guess so.”

She flushes, the shadow of it spreading up through her cheeks to her ears. He pushes back a lock of her blonde hair. She’s beautiful and he is _so, so in love_. 

“We made it,” she mumbles. “We’re alive and we’re safe and I’m at least half in love with you.”

Sylvain’s hand stills on her face. “What?”

“I think I might have been a little bit before all of this, but I am, Sylvain.” She leans down, careful not to rest any of her weight on his abdomen. “I love you.”

“Oh,” he says dumbly and he somehow doesn’t see that coming. “Cool.”

She laughs and a tear rolls down over her cheek. Sylvain’s thumb darts out to catch it and smear it away. Ingrid smiles. 

“Are we safe here, Ingrid?” he asks her softly.

“I don’t know,” she confesses. “But I’m safe with you.”

It’s the same thing that she had said to him back on the first day of the evacuation when he had suggested leaving their evacuation group. It makes a lump swell in his throat as he thinks about everything they have survived to get here: the places, the people, the actions. They’ve killed for each other and nearly died but they’re here and they’re _safe_. 

She kisses him again and this time Sylvain does wince when his stomach pulses. Ingrid pulls back immediately, sitting on his hips. She looks horribly guilty. He laughs and doesn’t even have the energy to make a joke about where she is currently resting. He slides awkwardly towards the edge of the bed, clearing just enough space for her to curl up next to him under his arm. She shuffles, leaning down until she rests her head on his shoulder and his arm curls around her as they cram onto a bed definitely not made for two. 

He kisses her eyelid. “I love you.” He kisses between her eyes. “I love you.”

She tilts her face up, catching his lips with hers, and mumbles, “I love you.”

It’s not the end–not yet–but they’re together. They’re alive. They’re safe. _They made it_. 

Maybe that’s enough for now. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic... was the best and worst thing I ever did. Participants of the big bang know that I, somehow, stupidly wrote a 50k first draft in about the span of 5 weeks. The original outline of this fic was for 3 chapters and 15k. Instead, I wrote 6 and it was 50. I did a couple run-throughs myself, cleaned it up a lot, you know the deal. 
> 
> and then I gave it to Mish. My lovely beta Mish. Who absolutely saved my ass by forcing me to develop, better, and support the story through edits and more detail which ended up adding 9k to the fic so now it's 60k. not really what I expected to happen in the editing process, but I'm not too mad about it. Anyway, there is no chance that this fic reads nearly as well as it does now without her help. I'm so grateful that she helped me through this process, both the writing and the editing. And her big bang is posted tomorrow so go show her some love there :D
> 
> second massive thanks to Fee! My lovely artist partner who did the beautiful, beautiful cover piece featured in chapter 1. Fee read my original draft when it was A MESS. But she created the most gorgeous piece of art that i still stare at every day because it's a GORGEOUS featured piece. Thank you so much for your support Fee and for agreeing to be my partner for this wild collaboration. Again, the art is [here](https://twitter.com/feliahanakata/status/1346189658363994113?s=20) and you can follow and show some love for Fee on [her Twitter](https://twitter.com/feliahanakata).
> 
> This piece....sent me into a creative spiral where after I started it, I couldn't stop writing. But it also took up a lot of my energy to finish, sending me into a sort of limbo recently. Either way, I'm glad it's finished and I hope you guys enjoyed the ride. Next, my attention turns to another event I'm in where I also am planning on writing too much. But after that, it should be back to songs about love. If you liked this fic, show it some love on Twitter or just follow [me on Twitter](https://twitter.com/nicolewrites37) to see the craziness I exude on a regular basis.


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